Spine
November 5, 2025 · via Europe PMC
Hospital Care for Children With Neuromuscular Spine Disease in the United States: Utilization, Charges, Comorbidities, and Deaths (2003-2019).
Ghauri M, Sindewald R, Fang M, +6 more, Ravindra VM.
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
US hospital admissions and charges for pediatric neuromuscular scoliosis fusion rose dramatically from 2006 to 2019 while length of stay stayed stable.
What was studied
A retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the Kids' Inpatient Database (2003-2019) examining utilization, charges, and complication predictors for pediatric neuromuscular scoliosis spinal fusion.
Key findings
- Admissions rose more than 30-fold, from 235 in 2006 to 7,242 in 2019
- Total charges rose from $22 million to $1.31 billion; mean charge per stay from $99,700 to $182,100
- Median length of stay remained 8 days
- Complication predictor details: specific statistic not fully captured in the abstract
Clinical relevance
Highlights the growing resource burden of neuromuscular scoliosis surgery and suggests complication reduction as a target, based on administrative data.
Who should care
Limitations
Administrative database analysis subject to coding limitations, with charges rather than costs reported.
Neuromuscular scoliosis surgery in children has become far more common and costly over two decades.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
Study design
Retrospective cross-sectional study.
Objective
We analyzed inpatient health care utilization, costs, and outcomes for pediatric neuromuscular scoliosis (NMS) in the US from 2003 to 2019. We describe hospitalization characteristics and identify predictors of perioperative complications.
Summary of background data
The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Kids' Inpatient Database (KID) collects nationally representative weighted data samples of pediatric hospital discharges.
Methods
We identified hospitalizations related to spinal fusion procedures for NMS in children from 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2016, and 2019. Hospitalizations were categorized as surgical (initial spinal fusion, wound dehiscence, wound infection) and complication-related (pneumonia, urinary tract infection, paralytic ileus, respiratory failure). Weighted national estimates of admissions, inflation-adjusted charges (2019 USD), length of stay (LOS), and hospital days were calculated. Survey-weighted logistic regression identified independent predictors of perioperative complications.
Results
Admissions for NMS rose >30-fold from 235 in 2006 to 7242 in 2019. Total charges increased from $22 million to $1.31 billion, and the mean charge per hospitalization increased from $99,700 to $182,100. Hospital days increased from 1942 to 58,528, and median LOS remained consistent at 8 days. In 2019, NMS accounted for 0.1% of pediatric admissions, 0.25% of hospital days, and 0.6% of hospital charges in the United States. Surgical wound complications were <0.5% of encounters but incurred mean charges exceeding $456,000 and median LOS of 30 days. Among 15,821 weighted encounters, overall mortality was 0.7%. The likelihood of perioperative complications was higher among children transferred from another facility or covered by public or "other" insurance, whereas age older than or equal to 10 years and Black race were associated with lower odds of complications ( P <0.05).
Conclusions
Over the past two decades, pediatric NMS has become substantially more resource-intensive, driven particularly by rising procedure costs, despite stable LOS and low mortality. Strategies for reducing perioperative complications may mitigate the economic burden of this vulnerable population.
Level of evidence
Level IV.
DOI
10.1097/brs.0000000000005561
PMID
41189353
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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