RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To characterize the incidence and duration of hospitalization due to diarrhea and to assess the proportion of hospitalizations that are attributed to rotavirus-associated diarrhea. DESIGN: Retrospective study of hospitalization data. SETTING: Hospitals located in Quebec. POPULATION STUDIED: Children from one to 59 months of age who were discharged from hospital from April 1, 1985 to March 31, 1998. MAIN RESULTS: There were 63,827 hospitalizations for diarrhea over the study period, for an average of 4910 hospitalizations/year. The epidemic curve showed a periodicity with regular alternation of high and low annual peaks. The number of hospitalizations for rotavirus-associated diarrhea was estimated according to three different methods. The estimates varied between 1353 and 1849 hospitalizations due to rotavirus-associated diarrhea/year over the 13-year period, with good agreement between the results of the three methods for a one-month to five years of age incidence of 320 hospitalizations for rotavirus-associated diarrhea/100,000 children. The average duration of hospital stay decreased from 5.2 days in 1985 to 3.3 days in 1998. CONCLUSIONS: The present article shows the importance of diarrhea hospitalizations among children and the alternating peak-year periodicity.