• Özlem Akgün, Fatma Gül Demirkan, Gülşah Kavrul Kayaalp, Merve Erdemir, Nergis Akay, Figen Çakmak, Mustafa Önel, Gonca Keskindemirci, Rukiye Eker Ömeroğlu, Emine Gülbin Gökçay, and Aktay AyazNurayN0000-0003-3594-7387Department of Pediatric Rheumatology, İstanbul Faculty of Medicine, İstanbul University, İstanbul, Turkey..
• Department of Pediatric Rheumatology, İstanbul Faculty of Medicine, İstanbul University, İstanbul, Turkey.
• Postgrad Med. 2023 Nov 1; 135 (8): 824830824-830.

ObjectiveTo reveal the vaccination status of patients with pediatric rheumatic disease (PedRD) and to compare this with healthy controls.MethodsThe electronic health records of the Ministry of Health regarding the vaccination status of children with PedRD followed in a tertiary hospital were analyzed cross-sectionally and compared with their healthy controls. The missing vaccines were reported according to individual, age-appropriate schedule and causes of skipped vaccines in both groups were investigated with an online survey.ResultsThe vaccination rate of patients in the last examination was 71.4% (90/126) and 95.7% (110/115) in healthy controls (p < 0.001). Measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, diphtheria, the administration rates of the second dose of tetanus-acellular pertussis-inactivated polio and Haemophilus influenzae type B, chickenpox, and hepatitis A vaccines were significantly lower in patients than in controls (p values 0.004, 0.02, 0.01, 0.013, respectively). The pre-diagnosis incomplete vaccination proportion was significantly higher in the patient group (16.6%) than in healthy controls (4.3%) (p = 0.002). In the patient group, the proportion of incomplete live-attenuated vaccines after diagnosis (25%) was more than pre-diagnosis (61.1%) (p = 0.04), while the proportion of incomplete non-live vaccines before and after diagnosis was similar (47.2% and 50%, respectively) (p = 0.73). The major reasons for missed vaccines were physicians' recommendations (15.6%), the presence of PedRD diagnosis (12.5%), and the drugs used (12.5%).ConclusionVaccination coverage of PedRD patients has been shown to lag behind the routine vaccination schedule (71.4%). In addition to new recommendations, electronic health system records for vaccination may be appropriate for the follow-up of these patients, and the addition of reminder alerts may be useful to reduce the rate of missed vaccinations.

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