Pediatric Emergency Care and Medicine: Open Access

Investigating Pediatric Asthma Emergency Attendances in North East Essex: Themes, Findings and Opportunities for Improvement

Objectives: To determine the rate of pediatric A&E attendances and admissions for asthma exacerbations in North East Essex and identify any potential causative factors. Design: Retrospective service evaluation of routine data collected in A&E and children’s inpatient unit. Setting: Colchester General Hospital Emergency Department, Essex, UK. Participants: 55 children aged 2-17 (inclusive) attending A&E for an acute asthma exacerbation between 1 March 2017 and 28 February 2018 identified using A&E records. Main outcome measures: The primary outcome measures were number of attendances and hospital admissions for asthma exacerbations. Secondary outcome measures included number of attendances coming from schools, reattendance rate, length of stay, proportion of new asthma diagnoses, proportion of patients attending with an inhaler, age at presentation, time of day of presentation, time of the year of presentation and day of the week of presentation. Results: The attendance rate for asthma was around 114 per year, with around 43 admissions. Three attendances with one admission came from schools. 78% of those attending had a pre-existing diagnosis of asthma; however 18% of those attending had an inhaler, but no previous diagnosis of asthma. Conclusions: Pediatric asthma in North east Essex is perhaps less of an issue than it was previously reported to be and only a very small minority of attendances are from schools. There is a significant minority of patients who are being prescribed inhalers, but do not have a documented asthma diagnosis; this is a potential area for improvement.

Author(s):

James Harper

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