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Abstract
Background Syndromic surveillance, which provides real-time data, may provide timely drowning surveillance compared with hospital discharge data where the release of data may be delayed. We compared data on hospital visits for unintentional drowning identified in hospital discharge and syndromic surveillance data sets for accuracy and completeness.
Methods We compared data for hospital visits for unintentional drowning identified in the Texas Health Care Information Collection hospital discharge and syndromic surveillance data sets for metropolitan Houston, Texas, USA from 2019 to 2021. Hospital visits included emergency department-only visits and hospital admissions. We compared time-series visualisation of hospital visits between data sets. Injury burden, demographics and intercounty distribution of drowning patients were compared using the Pearson correlation coefficient for continuous data and the Pearson χ2 goodness-of-fit test for categorical data.
Results We identified 860 hospital discharge visits and 929 syndromic surveillance visits (quarterly median (IQR): 64.0 (26.8–117.5); 54.5 (28.0–132.3), respectively) for unintentional drowning. Time-series visualisation showed a high correlation between syndromic surveillance and hospital discharge visits (correlation coefficient: 0.93 (95% CI: 0.77 to 0.98)). There were small differences by race, ethnicity and county for all ages and for paediatrics and large differences by sex for all ages in the number of unintentional drowning hospital visits identified within the data sets.
Conclusions Regional unintentional drowning burden and trends are highly correlated between syndromic surveillance and hospital discharge data. Small differences by race, ethnicity and county and large differences by sex in the number of unintentional drowning hospital visits were identified between data sets. Syndromic surveillance is useful for real-time surveillance of unintentional drowning.
- Surveillance
- Drowning
- Descriptive Epidemiology
Data availability statement
No data are available. Data are available from the primary sources.
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Data availability statement
No data are available. Data are available from the primary sources.
Footnotes
Collaborators NA.
Contributors NP conceptualised and designed the study, drafted the initial manuscript and contributed substantially to its review and revision for important intellectual content. JLJ coordinated and supervised data collection and transfer from other sites, contributed substantially to the review of the manuscript and its revision for important intellectual content. EAC provided statistical expertise on study design and analysed the data, drafted the initial manuscript and contributed substantially to the review of the manuscript and its revision for important intellectual content. NNL analysed the data, contributed substantially to the review of the manuscript and its revision for important intellectual content. RPS conceptualised and designed the study, undertook acquisition and management of data, drafted the initial manuscript and contributed substantially to its review and revision for important intellectual content. RS is the guarantor of the manuscript.
Funding This study was funded by a grant from the CDC: U01 CE003504-01. The funding agency had no role in analysis, reporting and interpretation of data.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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