Pediatric Septic Arthritis and Osteomyelitis in the USA: A National KID Database Analysis

Excerpt

We read with interest the recent publication by Safdieh et al., “Pediatric Septic Arthritis and Osteomyelitis in the USA: A National KID Database Analysis” [5]. The authors reported that between 1997 and 2012, the incidence rate of osteomyelitis in the USA increased from 7.9 to 10.5 per 100,000 children, that the rate of septic arthritis was unchanged from 5.3 to 5.2 per 100,000 children, and that the rate for combined infections increased from 0.8 to 1.3 per 100,000 children. They also stated that the Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) contains a sample of hospital admissions from approximately 1000 US hospitals. However, the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) website (https://​hcup-us.​ahrq.​gov/​db/​nation/​kid/​kidfilespecs.​jsp) records a much higher number of community hospitals contributing to the KID datasets—an increase from 2521 in 1997 to 4179 in 2012 out of a total of 5118 US community hospitals—resulting in unequal datasets. …