Monitoring Hospital Emergency Department Visits for Chief Complaints of Insect Bites after a Major Flood

On August 20th and 21st, 2007, Ohio sustained heavy rains which resulted in severe flooding over a nine-county area in the north-central part of the state. Increased hospital emergency department (ED) visits were expected for gastrointestinal illnesses, but this was not observed. After a media report on September 4, 2007 suggested swarms of mosquitoes were plaguing residents, ED character-specific data were analyzed to see if these data could confirm the report.

Objective

This retrospective analysis of text fragments in emergency department chief complaints illustrates the usefulness of syndromic surveillance in providing timely situational awareness of insect prevalence in post-flood situations.