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Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

PURPOSE: Anecdotal reports suggest a significant increase in acute presentations of eating disorders among children and adolescents. Our objective was to compare the rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for pediatric eating disorders before and during the first 10 months of the...

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Autores principales: Toulany, Alène, Kurdyak, Paul, Guttmann, Astrid, Stukel, Thérèse A., Fu, Longdi, Strauss, Rachel, Fiksenbaum, Lisa, Saunders, Natasha R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34690054
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.09.025
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author Toulany, Alène
Kurdyak, Paul
Guttmann, Astrid
Stukel, Thérèse A.
Fu, Longdi
Strauss, Rachel
Fiksenbaum, Lisa
Saunders, Natasha R.
author_facet Toulany, Alène
Kurdyak, Paul
Guttmann, Astrid
Stukel, Thérèse A.
Fu, Longdi
Strauss, Rachel
Fiksenbaum, Lisa
Saunders, Natasha R.
author_sort Toulany, Alène
collection PubMed
description PURPOSE: Anecdotal reports suggest a significant increase in acute presentations of eating disorders among children and adolescents. Our objective was to compare the rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for pediatric eating disorders before and during the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Using linked health administrative databases, we conducted a population-based repeated cross-sectional study of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for eating disorders among all children and adolescents aged 3–17 years, residing in Ontario, Canada. We defined the pre-COVID period from January 1, 2017, to February 29, 2020, and the post-COVID period from March 1, 2020, to December 26, 2020. Poisson generalized estimating equations were used to model 3-year pre-COVID trends to predict expected post-COVID trends and estimate the relative change from expected rates. RESULTS: In our population of almost 2.5 million children and adolescents, acute care visits for eating disorders increased immediately after the onset of the pandemic, reaching a 4-week peak annualized rate of 34.6 (emergency department visits) and 43.2 per 100,000 population (hospitalizations) in October 2020. Overall, we observed a 66% (adjusted relative rate: 1.66, 95% confidence interval: 1.41–1.96) and 37% (adjusted relative rate: 1.37, 95% confidence interval: 1.25–1.50) increase in risk for emergency department visit and hospitalization, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Acute care visits for pediatric eating disorders increased significantly in Ontario after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic and remained well above expected levels during the first 10 months of the pandemic. Further research is needed to understand the social and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the observed changes in health system utilization.
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spelling pubmed-85307902021-10-22 Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic Toulany, Alène Kurdyak, Paul Guttmann, Astrid Stukel, Thérèse A. Fu, Longdi Strauss, Rachel Fiksenbaum, Lisa Saunders, Natasha R. J Adolesc Health Original Article PURPOSE: Anecdotal reports suggest a significant increase in acute presentations of eating disorders among children and adolescents. Our objective was to compare the rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for pediatric eating disorders before and during the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Using linked health administrative databases, we conducted a population-based repeated cross-sectional study of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for eating disorders among all children and adolescents aged 3–17 years, residing in Ontario, Canada. We defined the pre-COVID period from January 1, 2017, to February 29, 2020, and the post-COVID period from March 1, 2020, to December 26, 2020. Poisson generalized estimating equations were used to model 3-year pre-COVID trends to predict expected post-COVID trends and estimate the relative change from expected rates. RESULTS: In our population of almost 2.5 million children and adolescents, acute care visits for eating disorders increased immediately after the onset of the pandemic, reaching a 4-week peak annualized rate of 34.6 (emergency department visits) and 43.2 per 100,000 population (hospitalizations) in October 2020. Overall, we observed a 66% (adjusted relative rate: 1.66, 95% confidence interval: 1.41–1.96) and 37% (adjusted relative rate: 1.37, 95% confidence interval: 1.25–1.50) increase in risk for emergency department visit and hospitalization, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Acute care visits for pediatric eating disorders increased significantly in Ontario after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic and remained well above expected levels during the first 10 months of the pandemic. Further research is needed to understand the social and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the observed changes in health system utilization. Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. 2022-01 2021-10-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8530790/ /pubmed/34690054 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.09.025 Text en © 2021 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Original Article
Toulany, Alène
Kurdyak, Paul
Guttmann, Astrid
Stukel, Thérèse A.
Fu, Longdi
Strauss, Rachel
Fiksenbaum, Lisa
Saunders, Natasha R.
Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
title Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_fullStr Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_short Acute Care Visits for Eating Disorders Among Children and Adolescents After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_sort acute care visits for eating disorders among children and adolescents after the onset of the covid-19 pandemic
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34690054
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.09.025
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