Retrospective evaluation of cases referred to Uludağ University Health Board for the Disabled

In our study, it is aimed to make a descriptive review of the hospital reports of the patients who applied to Uludağ University Disabled Health Board, and to evaluate the changes after their export to the system of Report for Children with Special Healthcare Needs (R-CSHCN). Our study is a descriptive study conducted by retrospectively scanning of Disabled Health Board Reports (DHBR) and R-CSHCNs of the patients who applied to Uludağ University Medical Faculty Hospital Disabled Health Board for children between 20/02/2018 - 20/02/2020. The study is based on patients' reports, their medical files are not assesed in the study. All patients admitted between the specified dates constitute the population and sample of the study. All of the patients' reports are included in the study, and there were no exclusion criteria. In total 1747 patients' reports have been assesed, 44,7% of them had a history of application to child and adolescent psychiatry. 58,2% of the patients are male, 41,8% are female, the mean age is 8,500 ± 4,804 years and the median is 8,0 years. 43,3% of the patients have an intellectual disability, 26% of them have developmental delay (DD) (69,6% of them together with cognitive developmental delay (CDD)), 12,1% of them have specific learning disorder (SLD), and 11,9% of them have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. 14,9% of the patients who have CDD diagnosis have borderline intellectual functioning, 61,7% of them have mild intellectual disability, 15,9% of them have moderate and 7,6% of them have severe intellectual disability. In R-CSHCNs, the rate of diagnosis of SLD is significantly higher (p <0.001) as compared to DHBRs, and the rate of diagnosis of DD is significantly lower than DHBRs (p <0.001). A comorbid psychiatric diagnosis is found in 12,1% of the patients. This rate is found to be significantly lower in R-CSHCNs than in DHBRs (p = 0.001). The most common comorbidity is attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (49,5%). It is found that 42,1% of patients have an accompanying systemic disorders, of which 26,5% are neurologic, 19,1% are genetic, 14,6% are ear-throat-nose disease. 24,6% of the patients have a comorbid epilepsy diagnosis. The results of our study examine the applications of children with special needs for health board reports and it is a study that emphasizes the effects of systemic changes on application rates and diagnosis distributions. In order to provide appropriate support for children with special needs, it is aimed to determine the clinical reflections of the systemic changes and to contribute to the field for the future studies both for the clinicians and the legislators.