Abstract

Background: Acute gastroenteritis (AGE) is considered to have second greatest burden of all the infectious diseases. Knowledge of the etiology of diarrhea and its correlation to the length of hospitalization is not only important for the implementation of appropriate public health measures to control these disease but also, in many cases, for correct treatment. We aimed to investigate the epidemiology, clinical, and operational characteristics of AGE in hospitalized children in a tertiary pediatric center in Riyadh.
Methods: Patients aged less than 14 years who were diagnosed with AGE and admitted to the Department of Pediatrics of King Abdullah Specialist children’s Hospital between January 2017 and December 2019 were enrolled. This study reviewed 902 patients with acute gastroenteritis.
Results: The age group with the highest risk of hospitalization with AGE was children under the age of 2 years. Three hundred thirty-nine (87.1%) of pathogen positive stool samples were due to undetermined pathogens, while 50 (12.9%) were due to known pathogens. The study found that gender and age at diagnosis were statistically insignificant for the length of hospitalization. More with greater, the length of hospitalization was more among patients with the undetermined pathogens.
Conclusion: This study found that the Salmonella species and a rotavirus were the most common known pathogens of AGE in hospitalized children. The gender and age of children with AGE had no association with the length of hospitalization. Moreover, the length of hospitalization was higher in children with AGE caused by undetermined pathogens than known pathogens.

Key words: Gastroenteritis, epidemiology, Riyadh, children, aetiology