Epidemiological and morbidity pattern of respiratory diseases in children admitted in the paediatric ward of a tertiary hospital in Southern Nigeria

Abstract

Context: Respiratory tract diseases contribute a majority of paediatric admissions and are a major cause of death in children less than five years.

Objective: To assess the epidemiological and morbidity patterns of respiratory disease in children admitted in the paediatric ward of a tertiary hospital in Southern Nigeria

Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study. Information on all patients admitted into the paediatric medical ward with a respiratory diagnosis from January 2013 to December 2017 were extracted from the ward register. Data were analysed using Stata version 15.1.

Results: The prevalence of respiratory diseases was 39.9% (1307 out of 3276). Five hundred and seventy-four (43.92%) of the 1307 children with respiratory disease belonged to the 12-59 months age group. Respiratory diseases were commoner in males (61.29%) with a male to female ratio of 1.6: 1, (p=0.86). The three commonest childhood respiratory diseases were pneumonia (46.09%), acute pharyngitis (26.8%) and bronchial asthma (11.41%). The median duration of admission for all children with respiratory diseases was five days with a discharge rate of 96.9%. Thirty-five children with respiratory diseases had complications. The commonest complication observed was congestive cardiac failure in 23 out of 35 (65.71%).  Analysis of the monthly trend showed a double peak for pneumonia in March and October with acute pharyngitis following a similar peak.

Conclusion: Infectious respiratory diseases are still the commonest respiratory diseases in Nigerian children but bronchial asthma is also on the rise. We therefore recommend a scaling up of programs for the prevention and treatment of childhood respiratory diseases.