Assessment of the impact of gender on hospitalization rates of children with cerebral palsy in a multidisciplinary children’s hospital of the federal level.

Despite the development of innovative methods of treatment and diagnostics, cerebral palsy is one of the most important problems of modern pediatrics, neurology and medical rehabilitation. Objective: to assess the influence of gender on the indicators characterizing the hospitalization of patients with cerebral palsy in a multidisciplinary children’s hospital at the federal level. Materials and methods. The data from the medical information system «Ariadna» on 568 children aged 0–17 years hospitalized with cerebral palsy in the psychoneurological department of the children’s clinical hospital of St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University in 2022–2024 were analyzed. For statistical processing and analysis of the obtained results, MS Office-2019 packages and the StatSoft-Statistica 10.0 statistical software package were used. Results. The age of male patients is significantly lower than the age of female patients (p<0.05). Most children with cerebral palsy, regardless of gender, arrived for treatment from the regions of Russia and have an urban lifestyle. There are no gender differences in the sources of funding for children’s hospital stay, which is mainly carried out from funds allocated for high-tech medical care. Also, no gender differences were found in the form, frequency, duration of hospitalization, methods of admission and types of referrals of children to the hospital. Most patients with cerebral palsy are admitted as part of a planned hospitalization, for the first time, independently, by referral from children’s clinics and hospitals. More than half of the children are in the department for up to 10 days, and there are no gender differences in the length of stay in the hospital. The most common diagnosis is « Spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy «, which is significantly more common in girls (p < 0.05). Predominantly, boys are diagnosed with « Other cerebral palsy» (p < 0.05). Even though the category «Disabled child» is assigned to most patients of both sexes, the outcome of hospitalization for children is most often positive, and gender differences in these indicators were not found. Conclusion. The main gender difference in patients with cerebral palsy is related to age and some features of the disease diagnosis. The absence of differences in other indicators characterizing hospitalization shows a standardized approach to the treatment of this contingent of patients