Journal of Lung Diseases & Treatment

Objective: Pneumonia is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in under five children in developing countries. Hence, the present study was undertaken to identify the various predisposing factors for pneumonia in children aged 1 month to 5 years.
Methods: Sixty pneumonia cases fulfilling the inclusion criteria, in the age group of 1 month to 5 years were interrogated for potential predisposing factors as per a predesigned proforma. Sixty healthy control children in the same age group were also interrogated.
Results: The significant predisposing factors for pneumonia were overcrowding (p value < 0.001), lack of exclusive breastfeeding for first 6 months in babies less than 1 year old (p value < 0.05), incomplete immunization for age (p value < 0.001) and malnutrition (p value < 0.001). On logistic regression analysis, overcrowding and malnutrition were significant independent risk factors.
Conclusion: The present study has identified many demographic, nutritional and environmental pre-disposing factors for pneumonia which can be tackled by effective health education of the community and appropriate initiatives taken by the government.

Background: Severe acute asthma and its treatment may uncommonly result in cardiac complications such as arrhythmias and acute coronary ischaemia.
Methods: We carried out a retrospective audit of 14 children treated for acute severe asthma with intravenous (IV) salbutamol at the Leicester Royal Infirmary between September 2012 and April 2013. Cardiac troponin I levels were measured at the time blood was sampled for monitoring of blood biochemistry.
Results: Cardiac troponin I (CTnI) levels ranged from 20 to 4255 mg/ml; 8 children had elevated CTnI levels (>40mg/ ml) on 9 occasions. Neither total (mg/kg) salbutamol (inhaled + IV) or total (mg/kg) salbutamol IV dose correlated with blood CTnI levels.
Conclusions: In most patients, raised CTnI were not associated with signs or symptoms of cardiac dysfunction. Our findings highlight the need for close cardiac monitoring of children with acute severe asthma on IV salbutamol therapy.