[Burden of hospitalization of children with viral meningitis in Bialystok, 2003-2005].

OBJECTIVE

This study examined the burden of hospitalization of children with viral meningitis in Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Medical University of Bialystok from 2003 to 2005.

METHODS

Data were extracted from Children Teaching Hospital database. A hospitalization with viral meningitis was defined as any discharge with diagnoses of mumps meningitis (B26.1), enteroviral meningitis (A85.0), tick-born encephalitis (A84.1) and viral undifferentiated meningitis (A87.9) due to ICD-10. Outcome measures included number of hospitalizations in total and due to different etiology as well as their impact in the budget of the unit.

RESULTS

316 hospitalizations with viral meningitis were identified. Of these 246 (77.6%) were diagnosed with mumps etiology, 10 (3.2%) with enteroviral, 1 (0.3%) with tick-born virus and 59 (18.7%) with unknown viral etiology. Most cases of viral meningitis were hospitalized in 2003--132 (41.8%). Of these 93.9% were diagnosed with mumps meningitis. In 2005, of 78 hospitalizations associated with viral meningitis 10 (12.8%) were confirmed and further 38 (48.7%) were suspected enteroviral meningitis. The percentages of costs associated with viral meningitis in 2004 and 2005 (26% and 18.8%) were high in comparison to percentage of hospitalizations with viral meningitis (10.7% and 7.3%, respectively).