Experience of an Italian Pediatric Third Level Emergency Department during the 2022–2023 Bronchiolitis Epidemic: A Focus on Discharged Patients and Revisits

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe the 2022–2023 bronchiolitis epidemic season (the second after COVID-19 pandemic and the first without social restriction), focusing on patients discharged home from a pediatric emergency department (PED) and on those revisited within 72 h. We performed a retrospective observational study in an Italian tertiary care children’s hospital, reviewing PED accesses from 1 October 2022 to 31 March 2023. The number of hospitalizations for bronchiolitis was extracted from hospital discharge forms. A total of 512 patients diagnosed with bronchiolitis were admitted to PED (2.8% of total admissions). Accesses increased sharply from November to January, with a peak in December, in both admissions and hospitalizations. More than half of the patients (55.5%) were safely discharged home, while 38 (13.4%) came back to PED for a revisit. Overall PED accesses and hospitalizations for bronchiolitis increased since the previous epidemic season, and particularly compared to the pandemic and pre-pandemic eras. Empowering the collaboration between all healthcare provisioners is fundamental to suitable management of patients. Monitoring the epidemiology and seasonality of bronchiolitis is a starting point for an effective internal organization of pediatric departments and to further evaluate its socio-economic burden.