Prolonged length of stay (LOS) and increased hospital costs were associated with pediatric ICU admission, multispecialty care, 7- and 30-day readmission, multiple antiseizure medications, and psychiatric disorders/functional neurologic disorders, according to a study published in the Journal of Child Neurology. Investigators who aimed to describe inpatient LOS patterns, identi- fy key drivers related to prolonged LOS, and eval- uate the relationship between LOS and readmis- sion in pediatric neurology conducted a retro- spective review of patients younger than 19 ad- mitted with a principal neurologic diagnosis be- tween January 2017 and July 2019. Scheduled admissions and hospital admissions of more than 30 days were excluded from the analysis. LOS was obtained in addition to demographic char- acteristics, principal discharge diagnosis, multi- specialty care, use of multiple antiseizure medi- cations, inpatient hospital costs, pediatric ICU admission for unplanned admissions, and 7- and 30-day readmissions. During the study period, 1,579 unplanned admissions occurred. The most common reasons for admission were seizure (n = 942), headache (n = 161), other neurologic diagnosis (n = 121), and psychiatric disorders/ functional neurologic disorder (n = 60). Children admitted to the hospital for a neuro- logic condition had an average LOS of 2.8±5.0 days for unplanned admissions, 4.5±7.4 days for 7-day readmissions, and 5.2±7.5 days for 30-day readmissions.
