Socio-Demographic, Clinical and Laboratory Characteristics Evaluation of Refugee Patients Admitted to the Pediatric Inpatient Service

Abstract

Purpose: Children are among the groups most affected by migrations in the short- or long-term. It is known that in children with insufficient healthy growth and development, vaccination, and protection from infections, the development of chronic diseases and hospital admissions due to diseases increase. This study aims to compare the sociodemographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics of refugee patients and native patients admitted to the pediatric inpatient service at a university hospital. Materials and Methods: 106 refugees and 360 native children aged 0-18 years, who were hospitalized in the pediatric service between January 1,2019 and January 1,2020 were included in the study. Patients’ data were retrospectively collected from hospital records. Results: The mean age of refugees was 5.11±3.11 and the native patients was 6.43±4.31 years (p=0.001). Natives were more likely to be hospitalized with upper respiratory tract infections and refugees were hospitalized with blood and neurological diseases (p=0.001). It was found that 58.6% of the refugees and 41.4% of the natives had chronic diseases (p=0.001). While C-reactive protein, white blood cell, platelet, eosinophil, nucleated red blood cell, immature granulocyte and red cell distribution width parameters were significantly higher, hemoglobin and hematocrit parameters were significantly lower in refugee children compared to native patients (p<0.05). Conclusion: Infectious diseases, chronic diseases, problems related to nutritional deficiencies in refugee patients may result in an increase in hospital admissions. Among the reasons for the hospitalization of refugee patients, chronic diseases are more prominent. Therefore; chronic diseases should be taken into account as well as acute complaints of refugee patients.

Keywords

• children
• inpatient
• refugee
• syria