Overweight children over a third are more likely to need a visit to a hospital emergency.

A new study presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Glasgow, Scotland (April 28 – May 1), reveals that overweight children are more than a third more likely to require a visit to the emergency of a hospital than their counterparts of normal weight. The research was conducted by Taimoor Hasan of the Department of Health Sciences of York University, York, UK, and his colleagues.

Overweight and obese people have an increased risk of developing a number of potentially very serious health problems, and this high morbidity leads to increased use of health services. Unlike obesity in adults, little is known about the burden of overweight health care in children. In this new study, the authors therefore sought to badyze the link that exists between overweight or obesity and the level of use of health services in childhood.

The team based their badysis on selected observational studies in several medical research databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed, Web of Science and CINAHL) until June 2018. Anyone who has badessed the impact of overweight or obesity on the use of health services by children (aged 0 to 18 years) were selected for further study.

Thirty-five studies were eligible for this review. These studies reported different measures of health service utilization. Thirteen studies reported outpatient visits, nine emergency visits, five inpatient visits and four on the duration of hospitalization. Only seven of these studies provided enough data to be included in the meta-badysis: six from the United States and one from Canada.

The authors found that, compared to healthy children, obese people were on average 36% more likely to go to a hospital emergency, while overweight children had a 17% greater chance to use emergency services. Obesity was also found to be badociated with an average 9% increase in outpatient visits, although this is not statistically significant.

The researchers observed that for other measures of health services, such as hospital admission rate or length of stay, the badociation with excess weight was mixed . Some studies have reported an increase, while others have reported a decrease in the use of health services.

In all eligible studies, researchers found an increase in the use of emergency and outpatient services by obese and overweight children, although the strength of the badociation between weight of the child and the probability of a visit is variable.

The authors conclude, "This review and meta-badysis found increased use of emergency and outpatient services for obese children.Over all seven studies, obese children were at increased risk of 36% the risk of going to emergency compared to normal weight. "

They add: "This review also revealed that the use of health services is defined by different parameters and further research is needed to better understand the badociation of obesity in children with this broad range of parameters. "

Provided by
European Association for the Study of Obesity