Association of Vitamin D Serum Concentration with Infection Outcomes for Children after Surgery

Vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency has been associated with various disease states and lower health outcomes. In the adult population, higher vitamin D levels correlated with decreased odds of in-hospital morbidity and mortality. However, no study examined the role of Vit D on the perioperative and post-operative outcomes in the pediatric patient population. We hypothesized that vitamin D deficient pediatric patients will have a higher incidence of composite infectious complications. As a secondary outcome we will analyze whether there is a relationship between the patient's vitamin D levels and hospital length of stay. With IRB approval we performed an EPIC search for all Children's Health patients from 2011 to 2015 where at least one 25-hydroxyvitamin D level was determined within the perioperative period (1 month pre- and post-surgery). Patients were included if they were less than 18 years of age and had underwent non-cardiac surgery. Patients were excluded if they did not receive general anesthesia, stayed less than one night in the hospital, had an American Society of Anesthesiologists Physical Status greater than 4, or underwent emergent surgery. Pertinent information including details of the surgery and relevant past medical history were collected for each patient to help analyze the data set and account for confounding factors. In order to have access to a larger number of patients, this project was performed in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, OH). The EPIC search provided us with 1600 patient charts from CMC or Children's Health-Plano, and 850 were included into the study after being screened using the criteria noted previously. After analyzing the data, The incidence of infection were 5.5%, 5.8%, 4.9%, 5.8%, and 11.7% for patients with vitamin D level ≤13, 14-19, 20-25, 26-34, and ≥35 ng/ml, respectively. The odds of having infection did not differ significantly among the five vitamin D groups. Secondly, no difference was found in the length of hospital stay among the five vitamin D groups (P = 0.55). Vitamin D levels do not seem to be associated with infection or length of hospital stay in pediatric surgical patients. Other baseline and surgical factors have probably a stronger influence on in-hospital infection and length of hospital stay than vitamin D levels.