TOPLINE:

Among children and young individuals (aged 0-18 years) admitted for medical stabilisation of restrictive eating disorders, more than half continued their recovery through outpatient care; however, a notable proportion were medically unstable on admission, and many required nutritional support.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a retrospective cohort analysis to evaluate outcomes of medical stabilisation admissions in children and young individuals (aged 0-18 years) with restrictive eating disorders.
• The analysis included 85 children and young individuals (median age, 15.1 years; 85.9% girls) who were diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, or atypical anorexia nervosa and admitted to paediatric wards at two hospitals in the UK between January 2018 and September 2022.
• At both centres, refeeding followed local paediatric guidelines, with oral intake initiated using plated meals at approximately 1200 kcal/d and increased after the first week to aim for a target weight gain of 0.5-1.0 kg/wk.
• Outcomes assessed included discharge destination, medical stability at admission, length of hospital stay, time to the first weight gain, biochemical refeeding syndrome, and need for oral nutritional supplements and nasogastric tube feeding.
• Medical stability at admission was defined as systolic blood pressure of more than 80 mm Hg, heart rate of more than 50 beats/min, and temperature of greater than 35.5 °C; biochemical refeeding syndrome was defined as phosphate levels of less than 1.0 mmol/L within the first 14 days of refeeding.

TAKEAWAY:

• Overall, 61.4% of patients were discharged to continue their recovery at home, whereas 38.6% required psychiatric inpatient care.
• On admission, 25.9% of patients were medically unstable. The median time to achieve medical stabilisation was 4 days, the median length of hospital stay was 21.0 days, and the median time to the first weight gain above admission weight was 7.0 days.
• Biochemical refeeding syndrome occurred in 24.1% of patients, without clinical signs; 36.1% required oral nutritional supplements for a median of 10.0 days, and 30.1% required nasogastric tube feeding for a median of 21.0 days.

IN PRACTICE:

"This study highlights the need for more key outcomes data sets for paediatric medical stabilisation admissions for CYP [children and young people] that consider medical, nutritional and psychosocial outcomes relevant to the stage of treatment and recovery. This would provide benchmarking for individual services as well as a baseline for interventional studies to work to improve the care and outcomes of CYP requiring medical stabilisation for restrictive eating disorders," the authors wrote.

"Furthermore, this study provides important information for the clinicians to be able to counsel patients and families alike on the expectations and range of likely outcomes from paediatric admissions," they added.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Juliet Banks, Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London, England. It was published online on April 02, 2026, in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

LIMITATIONS:

Data collection by two assessors may have introduced the risk for personnel bias. Psychological and social outcome measures were limited and were not defined by patients or caregivers. Variation in local care pathways, including service models and the availability of paediatric expertise, may have limited the generalisability of the findings.

DISCLOSURES:

No specific funding was declared by the authors for this study. The authors declared having no competing interests.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.