Peer-reviewed article
Vaccination status in children with congenital heart disease in Wuxi, China: Analysis of retrospective data.
Lingling Wang, Xu Yang, Shixin Xiu, Guanjie Chen, Xuwen Wang et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined vaccination rates and safety in 4,267 children with congenital heart disease aged 6 years or younger in Wuxi, China. Children received national immunization program vaccines at high rates (82-90%), but uptake of non-national vaccines was much lower (11-38%). Adverse events following immunization were rare and comparable to the general child population, indicating that routine vaccination is safe for children with heart defects.
Key points
- Vaccination coverage for national immunization program vaccines ranged from 81.91% to 90.34% by age 1 year
- Coverage for non-national immunization program vaccines was much lower, ranging from 11.30% to 37.78%
- Adverse event rates were 7.86 per 10,000 children, with general reactions at 6.90 and abnormal reactions at 0.96 per 10,000
- No severe vaccine reactions were observed in the study population
- Abnormal reaction rates were not significantly different from the general child population
Limitations
This is a retrospective observational study without a comparison group, so it cannot determine causation or identify factors that influence vaccination decisions. The data comes from medical institutions in one Chinese city and may not represent all regions or children with CHD.
Abstract
Vaccination rates among children with congenital heart disease (CHD) remain suboptimal. This study aimed to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics, vaccine coverage, and occurrence of adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) of children aged ≤6 y with CHD in Wuxi, China. The medical records of children with CHD who visited grade II and above medical institutions in Wuxi from 2022 to 2023 were collected from the Wuxi Health Information Platform. Vaccination data were retrieved from the Jiangsu Province Vaccination Integrated Service Management Information System. AEFI data were obtained from the National Vaccination Management Information System. Of the 4,267 children enrolled in this study, the top three causes of CHD were atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, and patent ductus arteriosus. The proportion of subjects who were administered the vaccine doses of the National Immunization Program (NIP) by the age of 1 year was 81.91-90.34%, whereas the proportion receiving the five non-NIP vaccines was 11.30-37.78%. The rates of AEFIs, general reactions, and abnormal reactions were 7.86, 6.90, and 0.96 cases per 10,000 children aged ≤6 y, respectively. No severe vaccine reactions were observed, and there was no significant difference in the occurrence of abnormal reactions as compared to the general population of children. The proportion of children with CHD receiving the NIP vaccines was relatively high, while the proportion administered the non-NIP vaccines was relatively low. Routine vaccination is safe for the majority of this patient population.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Routine vaccination according to national immunization program schedule
- Population
- 4,267 children aged ≤6 years with congenital heart disease in Wuxi, China
Key finding
81.91-90.34% of children received national immunization program vaccine doses by age 1 year