Parents' report on the health care management of spina bifida in early childhood.
Katherine S Ong, Matthew Reeder, Ann I Alriksson-Schmidt and 2 others
PMID 36530103WHAT IT FOUND
Parents reported young children with spina bifida had 7.4 spina bifida-related visits yearly.
Among children seeing specialists, they had 11.3 specialist visits. Children with shunts had more of both visit types, but not more emergency visits.
Key findings
01Parents reported an average of 7.4 spina bifida-related visits in the previous 12 months, excluding well-child visits.
02Children with a shunt had more spina bifida-related visits, and among children who had seen a specialist they had more specialist visits, but emergency visits did not differ.
03Half of children had an emergency visit in the previous 12 months, and 62% of those families said at least one emergency visit was spina bifida-related.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The sample was recruited partly through spina bifida clinics, so it may overrepresent families already seeking and receiving care. Over 83% of children had myelomeningocele, so findings may not apply to all children with spina bifida. Visit counts were parent-reported and may be affected by recall bias. Primary insurance at birth was missing for 56 children, and insurance at the time of the study was not available, so insurance effects could not be assessed. The study did not account for services such as mobility equipment vendors or continence supplies. The shunt-related visit differences may have been influenced by five high-visit outliers and by low visits among non-myelomeningocele children without shunts.
Declared interests
The authors reported no potential conflicts of interest to disclose, financially or otherwise.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the higher visit counts for children with shunts as proof that shunts cause more health care use. The study reports associations, and the authors note other complications may explain the difference.