Evaluating the Increased Burden of Cardiorespiratory Illness Visits to Adult Emergency Departments During Flu and Bronchiolitis Outbreaks in the Pediatric Population: Retrospective Multicentric Time Series Analysis

BACKGROUND: Cardiorespiratory decompensation (CRD) visits have a profound effect on adult emergency departments (EDs). Respiratory pathogens like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza virus are common reasons for increased activity in pediatric EDs and are associated with CRD in the adult population. Given the seasonal aspects of such challenging pathology, it would be advantageous to predict their variations. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to evaluate the increased burden of CRD in adult EDs during flu and bronchiolitis outbreaks in the pediatric population. METHODS: An ecological study was conducted, based on admissions to the adult ED of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) of Grenoble and Saint Etienne from June 29, 2015 to March 22, 2020. The outbreak periods for bronchiolitis and flu in the pediatric population were defined with a decision-making support tool, PREDAFLU, used in the pediatric ED. A Kruskal-Wallis variance analysis and a Spearman monotone dependency were performed in order to study the relationship between the number of adult ED admissions for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 codes related to cardiorespiratory diagnoses and the presence of an epidemic outbreak as defined with PREDAFLU. RESULTS: The increase in visits to the adult ED for CRD and the bronchiolitis and flu outbreaks had a similar distribution pattern (CHU Saint Etienne: χ(2)(3)=102.7, P<.001; CHU Grenoble: χ(2)(3)=126.67, P<.001) and were quite dependent in both hospital settings (CHU Saint Etienne: Spearman ρ=0.64; CHU Grenoble: Spearman ρ=0.71). The increase in ED occupancy for these pathologies was also significantly related to the pediatric respiratory infection outbreaks. These 2 criteria gave an idea of the increased workload in the ED due to CRD during the bronchiolitis and flu outbreaks in the pediatric population. CONCLUSIONS: This study established that CRD visits and bed occupancy for adult EDs were significantly increased during bronchiolitis and pediatric influenza outbreaks. Therefore, a prediction tool for these outbreaks such as PREDAFLU can be used to provide early warnings of increased activity in adult EDs for CRD visits.