An Emergency Department Management on Acute Asthma Exacerbations in Children Younger than 12 Years
Waqas Latif *
Bahawal Victoria Hospital, Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
Rehan Zahoor
BHU, Raju Wala Tehsil and District Bahawalnagar, Pakistan.
Maiera Khalid
Shaikh Zayed Hospital Lahore, Pakistan.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Objectives: The main objective of the study is to clinically audit and analyse the acute asthma exacerbations in children younger than 12 years regarding management of emergency department.
Methods: This clinical audit was done in Bahawal Victoria Hospital, Bahawalpur during January 2020 till June 2020. We retrospectively revised all the files of children aged 0–12 years who were visited for acute asthma in the Paediatric ED of Hospital. All the patients with a diagnosis of “acute asthma,” “wheezing bronchitis,” and “bronchospasm” were included.
Results: A total of 864 patients were seen in the Emergency Department during the study. Of these, a total of 293 patients were seen for a presentation of acute asthma. As some patients had multiple visits, the 293 records represented 278 unique patients. For assessing age and gender distribution of the patients, only data from the first visit were used. Otherwise, each record was treated independently for the purpose of analyses.
Conclusion: It is concluded that acute asthma management still remains an area of medical practice that continues to have long-standing difficulties.
Keywords: Acute asthma, children, emergency, pediatric, allergy