Changes in the Management of Children With Brief Resolved Unexplained Events (BRUEs)

BACKGROUND: In May 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a clinical practice guideline for brief resolved unexplained events (BRUEs). We evaluated for changes in the management of BRUE after guideline publication. METHODS: Using a pediatric multicenter administrative database, we compared rates of admission, testing, revisits, and diagnoses in patients diagnosed with a BRUE or apparent life-threatening event (ALTE) during 2017 with rates of admission, testing, revisits, and diagnoses in patients diagnosed with ALTE during 2015. We used interrupted time series analysis to test if the guideline was associated with changes in admission rate for all patients with ALTE or BRUE between 2015 and 2017. We stratified analyses by age (0-60 and 61-365 days). RESULTS: A total of 9501 patients were included (5608 in 2015 and 3893 in 2017). The admission rate decreased by 5.7% (95% confidence interval, 3.8% to 7.5%) for infants 0 to 60 days and by 18.0% (95% confidence interval, 15.3% to 20.7%) for infants 61 to 365 days from 2015 to 2017. Patients in 2017 had lower rates of EEG, brain MRI, chest radiography, laboratory testing, and urinalyses compared with patients in 2015. In the interrupted time series analysis model (n = 13 977), guideline publication was associated with decreasing admission rates (0.2% per week) for infants 61 to 365 days (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Compared with patients evaluated in 2015, patients with BRUE or ALTE in 2017 have lower rate of admissions and testing. Findings may be due to changes in the definition of BRUE and guideline recommendations. In this study, we evaluate changes in the management of BRUE after publication of a national practice guideline from a multicenter administrative data set.