• Qijun Shan, Xudong Ma, Yujie Chen, Guanghua Zhou, Sifa Gao, Jialu Sun, Fuping Guo, Feng Zhang, Dandan Ma, Guoqiang Sun, Wen Zhu, Xiaoyang Meng, Guiren Ruan, Yuelun Zhang, Xutong Tan, Dawei Liu, Yi Wang, Chang Yin, Xiang Zhou, and Children Hepatitis in China, China National Critical Care Quality Control Center Group and National Quality Control Center for Medical Record Management.
• Information Center Department, State Key Laboratory of Complex Severe and Rare Diseases, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China.
• Chin. Med. J. 2024 Jan 31.

BackgroundHepatitis B poses a heavy burden for children in China, however, the national studies on the distributional characteristics and health care costs of children with severe hepatitis B is still lacking. This study aimed to analyze the disease characteristics, health economic effects, and medical cost for children with severe hepatitis B in China.MethodsBased on patient information in the Hospital Quality Monitoring System, cases with severe hepatitis B were divided into four groups according to age, and the etiology and symptoms of each group were quantified. The cost of hospitalization was calculated for cases with different disease processes, and severity of disease. The spatial aggregation of cases and the relationship with health economic factors were analyzed by Moran's I  analysis.ResultsThe total number of children discharged with hepatitis B from January 2016 to April 2022 was 1603, with an average age of 10.5 years. Liver failure cases accounted for 43.48% (697/1603,) of total cases and cirrhosis cases accounted for 11.23% (180/1603,). According to the grouping of disease progression, there were 1292 cases without associated complications, and the median hospitalization cost was $818.12. According to the spatial analysis, the aggregation of cases was statistically significant at the prefectural and provincial levels in 2019, 2020, and 2021 (all P <0.05). The number of severe cases was negatively correlated with gross domestic product (GDP, Moran's I <0) and percentage of urban population (Moran's I <0), and positively correlated with the number of pediatric beds per million population (Moran's I >0).ConclusionThe number of severe hepatitis B cases is low in areas with high GDP levels and high urban population ratios, and health care costs have been declining over the years.Copyright © 2024 The Chinese Medical Association, produced by Wolters Kluwer, Inc. under the CC-BY-NC-ND license.

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