Clinical Outcomes of Pediatric Asthma at Asthma Clinic of Phimai Hospital

Abstract

Background: Asthma is a common chronic disease in pediatric clinical practice. A pediatric asthma clinic was set up at Phimai Hospital to provide standard treatment and continuous care by a multidisciplinary pediatric patient care team. Objective: To compare the clinical outcomes of the asthma in children before and after receiving treatment at the pediatric asthma clinic at 1 and 2 years. Methods: This retrospective study recruited the children with asthma not more than 15 years of age who attended the pediatric asthma clinic at Phimai Hospital for at least 2 years between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2014. Their medical records including risk factors, age onset of asthma, number of emergency visits or hospitalization and predicted peak expiratory flow during 1 and 2 years of attendance at the clinic were collected. Statistical analysis was performed using Repeated Measures ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed-rank as appropriate. Results: Of all 118 asthma children enrolled into this study, 73 (61.9%) children were male and average age was 4.81+2.86 years. After attending the clinic for 1 and 2 years, emergency visits were significantly reduced from 5.50 to 1.05 and 0.50 visit/person/year, respectively (P<0.05). Hospitalization was also significantly decreased from 1.25 to 0.21 and 0.06 episodes/ person/ year, respectively (P <0.05). The predicted peak expiratory flow rate improved from 75.47 % to 86.19 % and 91.42 %, respectively (P<0.05). The number of children categorized as well controlled asthma symptom increased from 82 (69.5%) at 1 year to 96 (81.4%) at 2 years after treatment (P<0.05). Conclusion: Multidisciplinary care team of pediatric asthma clinic at Phimai Hospital significantly improved clinical outcomes of pediatric asthma patients.