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Increasing paediatric empyema admissions
  1. R Gupta1,
  2. S Crowley2
  1. 1Lung and Asthma Information Agency, Community Health Sciences Department, St George’s Hospital Medical School, London SW17 0RE, UK
  2. 2Department of Child Health, St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust, London SW17 0QT, UK
  1. Correspondence to:
    Dr S Crowley
    Department of Child Health, St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust, London SW17 0QT, UK; suzanne.crowley{at}stgeorges.nhs.uk

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Empyema is most often a complication of bacterial pneumonia or, less commonly, thoracic trauma or surgery. There have been reports of increasing numbers of children presenting to regional units in the UK,1–3 but there are no published national data that may provide evidence of a clear trend. Analysis of national routine admissions data provides information on health service utilisation and may provide a marker for the incidence of this relatively uncommon disease.

Hospital admissions in England were obtained from the hospital episode statistics system (www.dh.gov.uk). This database contains personal, administrative, and medical data on all patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England. It records episodes of care following admission to hospital and assigns a primary diagnosis on discharge using the WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Data are available by financial year (1 April to 31 March). From April 1995 diagnoses were classified using the 10th revision of ICD (ICD 10).

We identified admissions with a …

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Footnotes

  • RG is funded by Asthma UK, British Lung Foundation, and British Thoracic Society.

  • Competing interests: none declared.