All issues > Volume 31(9); 1988

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1988;31(9):1171-1182. Published online September 30, 1988.

Observation of Socail Background and Diesase Petterns of Children in an Institute for Adoption (the 2nd report).

Hong Hoon Lee¹, Myung Ik Lee¹, Soon Wha Kim¹, Don Hee Ahn¹, Keun Chan Sohn¹

¹Department of Pediatrics, National Medical Center, Seoul, Korea

Received: October 13, 1987;  Accepted: January 25, 1988.

Abstract

A study was made to see the family background of abandonment and clinical and laboratory findings in an institute for foreign adoption. The results were compared to the previous report from the same institute. The results were as follows. 1) Girls were much more than boys in number with male to female ratio of 1:2.1 2) Concerning age distribution, the infant under one month of age was most frequent (68.8%). 3) Birth place showed the midwife delivery was the most common. 4) Most of deliveries were normal fullterm delivery (67.3%). 5) Concerning the family background, 1,288 of them (46.5%) were from unmarried mothers and 959 (34.7%) were from married mothers. Age between 31 and 35 years was most frequent age group in married mothers. Most of unmarried mothers were between 21 and 25 years of age (40.4%). 6) On Mantoux test, 11.3% among tested patients proved to be positive and on routine VDRL 1.2 % showed postive. 7) Disease pattern; Among skin and mucous membrane disease, the pustule and abscess was the most common. Among respiratory tract disease and infectious diseases, the URI and chicken pox were most frequent respectively. And the frequent congenital anomaly was congenital heart disease and inguinal hernia, heman- gioma in the order of frequency. 8) On percentile distribution on neonatal weight, females were much more than males on low birth weight. 9) The 318 infants and children were admitted due to severe disease to Ped. Dept. National Medical Center including 135 boys and 183 girls. The main diseases of admitted patients were pneumonia, diarrhea and sepsis in the order of frequency.

Keywords :Instituionalized children, Social background, Disease pattern