Nonrespiratory Diagnoses Are Common in Hospitalized Influenza Patients

Nonrespiratory diagnoses are frequent among adults who are hospitalized with influenza infection, according to the results of a recent study.

“Influenza virus infection generally causes self-limited respiratory symptoms; however, in some patients, illness may be more severe, requiring hospitalization or resulting in death… Although respiratory diagnoses of seasonal influenza virus infection are well described, less is known about the breadth of nonrespiratory diagnoses,” the authors of the study wrote.

To examine this further, they conducted a cross-sectional study using data from 76,649 patients from the US Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network (FluSurv-NET) from October 1 through April 30 of the 2010-2011 through 2017-2018 influenza seasons.

Overall, 94.9% of the patients had a respiratory diagnosis and 46.5% had a nonrespiratory diagnosis. Pneumonia, sepsis, and acute kidney injury were the most common acute diagnoses (36.2%, 23.3%, and 20.2%, respectively).

Notably, 5.1% of the patients had only nonrespiratory diagnoses, and patients with only nonrespiratory diagnoses were less likely to receive antiviral therapy for influenza.

“The findings suggest that during the influenza season, practitioners should consider influenza in their differential diagnosis for patients who present to the hospital with less frequently recognized manifestations and initiate early antiviral treatment for patients with suspected or confirmed infection,” the authors concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:
Chow EJ, Rolfes MA, O’Halloran A, et al. Respiratory and nonrespiratory diagnoses associated with influenza in hospitalized adults. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(3):e201323. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.1323