Clinician Suspicion for Lyme Disease and Clinical Decision-Making in Children with Monoarthritis

In this large multi-center cohort of children evaluated for Lyme disease in a Lyme-endemic emergency department, we assessed the diagnostic accuracy of clinician suspicion and subsequent clinical decision-making for children presenting with monoarthritis. Among 1,582 children with monoarthritis evaluated for Lyme disease, 623 (39%) had Lyme arthritis and 32 (2%) had septic arthritis. Overall, 313 (20%) had an invasive joint procedure (arthrocentesis or arthroscopy), 194 (12%) received parenteral antibiotics, and 376 (24%) were hospitalized. Clinician suspicion had moderate discriminative ability for Lyme disease (area under the receiver operating characteristics curve: 0.75, 95% confidence i