Study design, study site and population
This is a 15-year monocenter retrospective study conducted in the pediatric department of a community general hospital in Liège, Belgium. Approximately 3000 children are hospitalized each year in our 85-bed pediatric department for numerous medical or surgical reasons (with the exclusion of organ transplantation and cardiac surgery).
We retrospectively searched for children (0-15-years-old) admitted to our pediatric department between January 1st, 2002, and June 30st, 2017 and coded in the hospital database with the diagnosis of pleural effusion, pleurisy or empyema. We also listed all the children for whom a chest drainage system (Pleur-Evac®) had been delivered by the hospital pharmacy during the study period. The medical charts of the selected children were reviewed, and only children with pleural effusion in the context of an infectious respiratory disease (as documented in the medical chart) were retained for analysis.