The burden of mental and behavioral health visits to the pediatric ED: A 3-year tertiary care center experience.

Background: The shortage of mental health services across the United States has turned pediatric emergency departments (PEDs) into safety-nets for the increasing population of children with mental and behavioral health (MBH) needs. This study provides a descriptive characterization of MBH-related PED visits, the trends in visit, ED length of stay (EDLOS), and admission rate.

Methods: We reviewed electronic health records of children ≤18 years with MBH needs, who visited the PED of a large tertiary hospital from January 2017 to December 2019.

The agitated pediatric patient located in the emergency department: The APPLIED observational study.

Objectives: Focused research on pediatric agitation is lacking despite being a common mental and behavioral health (MBH) emergency. Prevalence of pediatric agitation remains unknown, and prior reports may have underestimated the rate of restraint use for pediatric agitation. This is the largest study to provide a focused evaluation of the prevalence and predictors of pediatric agitation and restraint use as well as the emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) and admission rates for agitated patients.

Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental and Behavioral Health Visits to the Emergency Department.

Objectives: This study aimed to describe changes in pediatric emergency department (ED) mental and behavioral health (MBH) visits before and during the early COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed medical records of patients aged from 5 to 17 years presenting to the pediatric ED of a major tertiary care hospital with MBH-related concerns from March 2017 to September 2020. We evaluated trends in MBH ED visits over the study period, specifically comparing patient demographics, diagnosis categories, and ED disposition between the pre-COVID (2019) and COVID (2020) periods using pairwise Pearson χ 2 analyses with reported odds ratios (ORs) in SAS statistical software version 9.

Febrile illness after a beach day: a case of salmonella bacteremia from oral exposure to a sand dollar.

This case report discusses a rare presentation of salmonella bacteremia after an oral exposure to a sand dollar in a pediatric patient. A 2-year-old Hispanic male presented to the emergency department with a chief complaint of diarrhea and fever for 8 days after a family trip to Destin beach, Florida, during the sea turtle nesting season. The symptoms began a day after the patient took a bite on a sand dollar found on the beach that caused a small wound inside his cheek.

Kawasaki at the Extremes of Age: Thinking Outside the Box.

Kawasaki disease is an acute vasculitis syndrome that typically occurs in children aged 1 to 4 years. Because there is no specific diagnostic test for Kawasaki disease, the diagnosis is made clinically based on specific characteristic signs and symptoms. Cases in which patients fall outside of the typical age range are uncommon and often challenging to diagnose because they have atypical presentations.