Clinical Characteristics and Treatment Overview in Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease Using Real-World Evidence Based on Hospital Information System

OBJECTIVES: To describe the epidemiological characteristics and medication overview of HFMD in Guangzhou and analyze the factors of length of stay (LOS) based on TCM usage. METHOD: From January 1, 2014, to June 30, 2019, clinical data of HFMD (ICD-10 B08.401) as the initial diagnosis, based on HIS of five medical institutions for outpatient and inpatient cases, was collected. The inpatient cases of the five hospitals in Guangzhou were utilized for hospitalization analysis. Information extracted from the warehouse was standardized. Descriptive analysis was used for baseline characteristics, medication usage, and inpatient characteristics. Potential factors were analyzed by bivariate analysis. COX regression analysis and Kaplan–Meier analysis for calculating HRs and 95% CIs were adopted to determine the predictors of LOS. Stratified COX regression was applied to analyze the relationship between predictors and LOS and to calculate interaction. RESULTS: A total of 14172 patients with HFMD were included. It showed that HFMD would occur in males, infants, and summer. Cause and symptoms are the two aspects of conventional Western medicine treatments, while TCM treatment of HFMD took clearing heat and detoxification as the basic principle. Inpatients with HFMD were divided into two groups by the use ratio of TCM. Age, season, and disease severity were possible correlated factors of LOS, extrapolating from their disparity in distribution. By stratified Cox regression, three factors following presented as possible contributions to shortening LOS, including TCM ≥ 0.1 (HR = 1.79, 95% CI (1.67–1.92), P < 0.01), winter (HR = 1.28, 95% CI (1.12–1.47)), P < 0.01), mild HFMD (HR = 1.93, 95% CI (1.69–2.22), P < 0.01). Additive interaction of TCM use and disease severity was significant (RERI = 1.014 (0.493–1.534), P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Young children and high temperature were the risk factors of HFMD infection, which suggests that increasing surveillance for susceptible particular-age individuals and season is indispensable. Favorable factors to decrease LOS included a higher proportion of TCM use, mild HFMD, and onset in winter. The proportion of TCM use had additive interaction with disease severity, indicating that TCM may have antiviral and other biological effects on HFMD. Increasing the proportion of TCM use was probably beneficial to shortening LOS.