Factors Associated with Prolonged Hospital Stay: a Retrospective Study for Imported Malaria Cases

Abstract Background China had entered post-elimination era for malaria, however, the imported cases are continuously are a public health concern as the increasing number of cases. In this study we studied the potential predictive factors for prolonged hospital stay for imported malaria patients. Material and Methods We retrospectively collected patients of imported malaria cases data from 2017–2020 in our hospital. we analyzed the data from clinical, epidemiological, geographical, and seasonal points of view, and used cox proportional hazard model to find the predictive factors for prolonged hospital stay. Results We found most of imported cases were from Democratic Republic of the Congo(23%, 34/150) and most cases 74%(26/34) were infected by P. falciparum. Through Edwards Test, no significant seasonality of imported cases were found(χ2 = 2.51 p-value = 0.28). We found bacterial infection(HR = 0.58, p-value = 0.01) and thrombocytopenia(HR = 0.66, p-value = 0.02) were protective factors for discharge, that were, the risk factors for prolonged hospital stay. Conclusions The imported cases are the major risk of malaria in post-elimination era of China. The bacterial infection and thrombocytopenia were the risk factors for prolonged hospital stay.