WIP 19 - An Analysis of Infants Admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Following Brief Resolved Unexplained Events (BRUE): A Secondary Analysis of a Canadian Multicenter Retrospective Cohort Study

Poster Number: WIP 19
Publication Number: WIP 19.949

Background: Brief Resolved Unexplained Events (BRUE) are a common emergency department presentation in infants. BRUEs rarely represent a serious diagnosis, but a small subset of these infants is admitted to pediatric or neonatal intensive care units (ICU). To date, there is minimal research exploring the key factors driving ICU admissions for BRUE patients, or assessing whether these admissions are warranted or constitute an opportunity for quality improvement.

Objective: The objectives of this study is to describe the patient population admitted to ICU with BRUEs including the frequency of serious underlying diagnoses, event recurrence, and mortality. We will describe interventions including pharmacological management or ventilatory support and identify risk factors associated with ICU admission.

Design/Methods: This study is a secondary analysis of a multicenter retrospective cohort study, which included data from eleven Canadian pediatric tertiary care centers. Data was collected from 2017-2021, with 1042 infants included in the dataset. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Board at BC Children’s Hospital. For the secondary analysis inclusion criteria considered all infants presenting with a BRUE admitted to the ICU at any time during their admission- with 67 infants being eligible.

We will describe the cohort of patients admitted to the ICU, in terms of interventions received and clinical outcomes. Then we will conduct a comparative analysis between infants who were and were not admitted to the ICU to identify potential risk factors. We will compare the frequency of diagnostic tests and clinical outcomes between these two groups using descriptive statistics. Finally, the percentage of infants admitted to the ICU solely for monitoring will be compared to those who received ICU-level interventions. Data analysis completion is anticipated by Feb. 28, 2024.