Objective: To determine whether hospital discharges for intussusception in children younger than 1 year have changed since the reintroduction of rotavirus vaccine in the United States.
Design: Serial cross-sectional analysis.
Setting: US hospitals.
Participants: Children younger than 1 year with a discharge diagnosis of intussusception identified in the Kids' Inpatient Database, a series of nationally representative data sets of pediatric hospital discharges in the United States with 4 available years prior to vaccine reintroduction (1997, 2000, 2003, and 2006) and 1 year after (2009).
Main exposures: Hospital discharge before vs after rotavirus vaccine reintroduction.
Outcome measures: Total number and rate of hospital discharges for infants younger than 1 year with a diagnosis of intussusception (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification code 560.0).
Results: From 1997 to 2006, there was no change in the total number of hospital discharges for intussusception, with a small decrease in the rate of intussusception discharges (41.6 [95% CI, 36.7-46.5] to 36.5 [95% CI, 31.7-41.2] per 100,000 infants). Based on the trend, the predicted rate of discharges for intussusception in 2009 was 36.0 (95% CI, 30.2-41.8) per 100,000 infants. The measured rate of hospital discharges for intussusception in 2009 was 33.3 (95% CI, 29.0-37.6) per 100,000 infants.
Conclusion: The reintroduction of rotavirus vaccine since 2006 has not resulted in a detectable increase in the number of hospital discharges for intussusception among US infants.