Study of etiology and frequency of admitted patients diagnosed with arthritis in tabriz pediatric hospital 2011-2018

Abstract

Arthritis is one of the most important health problems in children. Due to the lack of epidemiological studies in the field of pediatric arthritis and the heterogeneity of their results and the fact that the studies were often conducted in European populations, during this study we examined the causes and frequency of patients admitted with arthritis in Tabriz Children's Hospital in 1390 until 1397. Methods and Materials: The present study was performed cross-sectionally on children under 16 years of age who were admitted to Tabriz Children's Hospital for the first time from 1/1/1390 to 12/29/1397 with a diagnosis of arthritis. Sampling was by counting and all members of the statistical community were included in the study. The information required for this study was extracted from patients' records and entered into the data collection form. After collecting data, patients were classified according to clinical and biological information. The data were then subjected to descriptive and analytical statistical analysis. Results: In total, 142 children were hospitalized with arthritis diagnosis during 7 years, of which 8 had a previous history of arthritis and were excluded from the study. Thus, 134 children were examined. The mean age of these patients was 5.64 (+/- 3.99) years. Of these, the highest number were 5 to 10 years old (27.6%). There were 73 male patients (54.5%) and 61 female patients (45.5%). The most common type of arthritis was septic arthritis which was present in 79 patients (59%) followed by juvenile idiopathic arthritis in 18 patients (13.4%). Comparison of the studied characteristics between patients with different types of arthritis showed that in terms of age, sex, the main complaint was not a significant difference between different types of arthritis, but in terms of duration of symptoms in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, patients had symptoms lasting more than 6 weeks (0.018 = P). There was also a significant difference between the number of joints involved between different types of arthritis, so that patients with reactive arthritis and juvenile idiopathic arthritis had more joints than the number of joints involved and patients with septic arthritis often had a small number of joints involved (P = 0.001).