Epidemiology of Reye's syndrome, United States, 1991-1994: Comparison of CDC surveillance and hospital admission data

This investigation describes the epidemiology of Reye's syndrome (RS) durin g 1991-1994 and compares two different sources of information in the United States, Estimates of the incidence of RS from the Centers for Disease Cont rol and Prevention (CDC) are compared with hospital inpatient data from app roximately one third of the hospitals from HCIA, Inc. During 1991-1994, 48 RS cases were reported to the CDC and 93 RS hospitalizations based on HCIA data. When the HCIA data are extrapolated to the US population, there were an estimated 284 hospitalizations. Cases reported from both data sources we re similar in distribution by onset, age, and sex. CDC data probably undere stimate the incidence of RS due to incomplete reporting and HCIA data may o verestimate it because not all cases were known to meet the CDC case defini tion. The true annual incidence of RS during the study years was probably b etween 0.2 and 1.1 cases per million population < 18 years of age. Copyrigh t (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel.