The retrospective data analysis on the spectrum of nervous system diseases in children
Authors: Liu Xiaohui , Chen Huanxi , Ma Xiansi , Yu Hongjia , Yang Haiyan , Ai Liang , Liu Qing , Wu Liwen 
Published: June 2022

Background
Nowadays, the development of diagnosis and treatment technology is constantly changing the pedigree and classification of nervous system diseases. The analysis of the changes of previous disease pedigrees is helpful to understand the changes brought by accurate diagnosis of diseases from the macro direction, and predict the changes of subsequent disease pedigrees and the direction of diagnosis and treatment.
Methods
The in-patients in neurology department from January 2012 to December 2020 in Hunan Children's Hospital were analyzed retrospectively. There were 36777 patients were enrolled in this study. The subsequent analysis was based on variables such as Age, Gender, Length of Stay (LoS), Monthly and Annual Number of Patients (MNoP and ANoP, respectively), and Average Daily Hospitalization Expense (ADHE). To assess the characteristics of neurology diseases, we applied a series of statistical tools such as numerical characteristics, boxplot, density chart, one way ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis test, time-series plots and seasonally adjusted indices.
Results
The following conclusions were drawn from the statistical analysis of neurological disease. Firstly, neurological disease in children mainly appear between the ages of 4 and 8 years. Among various neurological diseases, benign intracranial hypertension had the lowest average onset age, and most patients with bacterial intracranial infection were infants. Some diseases have similar mean onset age, such as convulsion and febrile convulsion. Secondly, most patients with central nervous system autoimmune disease were women. Hereditary metabolic encephalopathy is highly similar in terms of treatment options, while viral intracranial infection and epilepsy is in contrast, with obvious heterogeneity in treatment. It was noted that some neurological diseases showed seasonality, for example, central nervous system infectious disease was more frequent in high temperature season, while autoimmune disease mainly appeared in autumn and winter. In addition, the number of patients hospitalized for intracranial infection and encephalopathy has decreased significantly in recent years, while that for central nervous system autoimmune disease and hereditary metabolic encephalopathy has been increasing year by year. Finally, we found obvious polycentric distributions in the density distributions of some diseases.
Conclusion
The study provided an epidemiological basis for common nervous system diseases, such as age of onset, number of cases and so on. The spectrum of nervous system diseases took place great changes. The number of patients with infection related diseases and uncertain diagnosis is decreasing, and the proportion of neuroimmune diseases and genetic metabolic diseases is increasing; The existence of disease multimodal model suggests that there is still a lack of understanding of the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, which needs to be further improved, since accurate diagnosis helps to formulate individualized treatment plans and reasonably allocate medical resources; Moreover, it still lacks effective treatment for most genetic diseases; The seasonal characteristics of nervous system diseases suggest the need for the improvement of sanitation, living conditions and the awareness of daily health care.