Prevalence of gastroschisis and associated hospital time continue to rise in neonates who are admitted for intensive care.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate recent trends in the prevalence of gastroschisis.

METHODS

The study used a retrospective review of a deidentified neonatal intensive care patient data set. To control for ascertainment bias, the prevalence of omphalocele was calculated to provide an internal comparison to another anomaly requiring surgical intervention.

RESULTS

During the study period (1997-2007), there were 473,366 discharges from the neonatal intensive care unit in the data set. There were 2057 (5.3/1000 discharges) neonates who had a gastroschisis and 853 (1.8/1000 discharges) who had an omphalocele. Between 1997 and 2004, the reported rate of gastroschisis increased from 2.9 to 6.1/1000 discharges, a relative increase of 210% (P < .001). Since 2004, the values have remained relatively stable at between 5.5 and 6.2/1000 discharges. Between 1997 and 2007, the hospital days for patients with gastroschisis/total hospital days increased from 0.6% to 1.3%, a relative increase of 220% (P < .001). In contrast, the reported rate of neonates with and the number of hospital days attributed to neonates with omphalocele has not changed significantly.

CONCLUSION

The prevalence and the number of hospital days needed to care for neonates with gastroschisis have continued to increase since 2001.