Factors associated with the time to recover adequate nutrition in infants hospitalized for bronchiolitis, a French retrospective study.

Background: Inadequate feeding is a frequent reason for hospital referring in infants with bronchiolitis and may leads to unnecessary prolonged hospitalization. Our objective was to identify the factors associated with the time to recover adequate feeding (TRAF) and the hospital length of stay (LOS) in infants hospitalized for bronchiolitis.

Methods: We conducted a single-center retrospective study including infants less than 12 months hospitalized for bronchiolitis at Le Havre Hospital (France) between September 2018 and February 2021. A multivariate logistic regression model was computed to investigate the factors associated with (1) TRAF, and (2) LOS.

Results: 268 infants were included to assess the TRAF and 478 infants to assess the LOS. The median age was 3.2 months (1.6-5.4) and the sex ratio M/F was 11/20. The use of accessory muscles, nutritional support, and RR ≥70/min or <30/min or apnea are associated (OR=1.5), from virtually no association (OR=1.0) to a significant positive association (OR=2.6) with the TRAF. Intense use of accessory muscles (OR=3.9; 95% CI 1.6-10.4) and "severe" clinical condition (OR=2.8; 95% CI 1.7-4.8) at admission, O2 supplementation (OR=2.0; 95% CI 1.3-3.1) were significantly related to prolonged LOS in the multivariate analysis.

Conclusions: The clinical severity on admission may be related to the TRAF, ranging from none to significant. Other known factors such as oxygen therapy and the new clinical severity scale proposed by the latest French guidelines appeared to be related to the LOS in this work. Further studies are needed to highlight these factors.