All issues > Volume 30(12); 1987

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1987;30(12):1368-1377. Published online December 31, 1987.

Clinical and Epidemiological Studies on Childhood Bronchial Asthma.

Dong Hak shin¹

¹Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Keimyung University, Taegu, Korea

Abstract

Chilhood bronchial asthma tends to be increased annually and overall incidence is about 3-10% of childhood age. Asthma is a troublesome disease during school life and nocturnal attacks often frighten the family. Asthma is a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease but usually self remmission with or without specific treatment. Asthma can be triggered by a variety of causative facotrs such as extrinsic, emotional, environmental, immunological and respiratory infections. Several authors reported the prognosis of childhood bronchial astma but rare geographical data covering of mild and severe cases. So author tried to find out prognostic facotrs such as physical development, emothional life, school life through clinical survery with questionnaire of inpatients (140cases) and review of articles. The results are as follows; 1) Male to female ratio are 2.8:1 and the age distribution show 35.7% under 3 years old, 80% under 6 years old. Vulnerable age is 6. 2) The youngest asthmatic child is 10 months old, the oldest is 13 years old. Spring and autmon are most frequently attacked. 3) 16.4% of asthmatic children show maternal asthmatic history, 10.0% show paternal history and 5.0% show sibling history. 4) 37 of 140 asthmatic children had past allergic history; 29.7% in atopic dermatitis, 16.2% in allergic rhinitis, 13.6% in urticaria and in asthmatic bronchitis. 5) Clinical symptoms show cough (92.8%), dyspnea (62.8%), vomiting (15.7%) and fever (12.9%). Physical findings show wheezing (89.3%), rale (46.4%) and intercostal depression (17.9%). 6) Hematological examination shows leukocytosis (42.1%) and eosinophilia (45.0%). Serum IgE is increased in 55.7% above 250 IU/ml. 7) Skin patch test shows as follow: 56% are positive for house dust in the patient of urticaria, and 43% are positive for farinae in allergic rhinitis. 8) The clinical duration show 1 to 5 days in 17.1%, and 55.0% are 6 to 10 days. 9) According to the questionaire of the discharged patients, 53% are asymptomatic, 42% recurrent, 1.5% exercervation and 3.5% unknown. It seems to be not related with house cleaning and asthmatic attacks. 10) Taegu city: Seo-Gu:50 cases, Nam-Gu and Suseong-Gu:16 cases, Pook-Gu: 12 cases, Don-Gu:7cases, Jung-Gu:5 cases.

Keywords :Bronchial asthma;Geographic distribution