The Top Five Cases of Hospital Admissions in
Children
Theme: Health and Wellbeing Status
Background Information
The health and wellbeing status of children is of high importance with problems in childhood
often having an effect on their health as adults. It is therefore imperative that prevention efforts
and services meet the needs of this age group.
In England, younger children (e.g. under 5) have higher admission rates than older children with
emergency hospital admissions being more common than planned admissions. This is reflected
in the types of diagnoses for childhood admissions with respiratory diseases being one of the
most common causes.
Data
The data is extracted from the PCT admitted patient care database for patients aged between 0
and 18 years who had been admitted to hospital (finished consultant episodes) between 1st April
2008 and 31st March 2009.
Cumbria
There were a total of 14,908 hospital admissions for children aged 0-18 in 2008-09 in Cumbria.
Of these admissions, the top five diagnoses were for respiratory diseases, symptoms and signs
not elsewhere classified, injury and poisoning, digestive diseases and infectious and parasitic
diseases (Figure 1). These accounted for 58% of all hospital admissions in children in the period
specified with 17% from respiratory diseases alone.
The breakdown by age group shows that 26% of admissions were for children aged 1-4 years
old, followed by 24% for 15-18 year olds. In the under 10 year age groups, the majority of
admissions were for respiratory diseases (2004). This was in contrast to admissions in the two
older age groups where the largest number of admissions was for injury and poisoning (958).
05 February 2010
1
Figure 1: 2008-09 Top Five Hospital Admissions for Cumbria by Main Diagnosis and Age Group
2008 - 09 top five hospital admissions for children in Cumbria by main diagnosis (ICD 10 Chapter)
and age (0-18). Finished consultant episodes.
(source: Admitted Patient Care database)
3000
Number of admissions
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Diseases of the respiratory
system
Symptoms, signs and
abnormal clinical and
laboratory findings, not
elsewhere classified
0
05 February 2010
Injury, poisoning and certain
other consequences of
external causes
1-4
5-9
10-14
Diseases of the digestive
system
Certain infectious and
parasitic diseases
15-18
2