Causes of difficulty in walking amongst admitted children: An experience in tertiary care unit

Aim:. To determine the common causes of walking difficulty amongst children admitted in tertiary care unit and to determine the relationship of these causes with age. Methods: It was an observational descriptive study held at pediatric medical unit of The Children’s Hospital and the Institute of Child Health, Lahore from May 2017 to April 2018. Inclusion criteria was children aged between 2 years to 16 years and those who presented with difficulty in walk and got admitted in pediatric medical ward. Patients who were having history of trauma were excluded from the study. After taking parental consent, a predesigned proforma was filled for each patient. According to the underlying disease, treatment was given. All the data was entered in SPSS-version 16 and results were analyzed in percentages. To find out p-value, chi square test was applied and value less than 0.05 was significant. Results: Seventy five patients were enrolled. Amongst them, 62.7% were male and 37.3% were female. Mean age was 7.2 years. The most common causes were osteomyelitis (29.3%), juvenile idiopathic arthritis (22.6%) and septic arthritis (21.3%) followed by cellulitis (10.6%), rheumatic fever (5. %), psoas abscess (2.6%), scurvy (2.6%) and others (5.5%). These causes were seen mostly in children above 5 years of age (74.7%). Conclusion: Osteomyelitis was the commonest cause amongst admitted children with difficulty in walk. Serious consequences of the underlying diseases can be diagnosed promptly and treated effectively if early diagnosis can be made by a detailed history and examination.