Does Flu Vaccine Reduce Kids' ED Visits?

The CDC recently announced it expects a more severe flu season this year, but a study in the January issue of Pediatrics was unable to find a correlation between influenza vaccination rates for children under 5 years old and a decline in children hospitalized for influenza-related illness. Significant increases in emergency department (ED) visits (P<0.05) and decreases in hospitalizations (P<0.05) over time were not clearly related to vaccination trends, researchers wrote. "We know the vaccine is 50% to 70% effective in preventing medical care visits for kids, but there's a lot of variability from year to year in which a strain circulates, so it's hard to really link trends in illness to vaccine uptake at this point," http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/Vaccines/48976?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2014-12-09&utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyHeadlines&utm_source=ST&eun=g721819d0r&userid=721819&email=amydugan2%40gmail.com&mu_id=5883165&utm_term=Daily