Association of Respiratory Tract Infection among Children Presented with or without Anaemia: A Retrospective Study

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Children have the highest rate of prevalenceof anaemia and hence face major health problems. Botheconomic and social development is adversely affected byanaemia. Children below 5 year of age suffer 4 – 5 episodesof RTI (Respiratory Tract Infection) per year. This study wasaimed to find the association of RTI with anaemia.Material and Methods: This retrospective study wasconducted among children of age group 1-14 years presentedwith upper and lower RTI. The results were analyzed on thebasis of clinical findings, results of laboratory investigationsand data was statistically analyzed to find out the association.Results: Total of 50 children (age 1 to 14 years) were included.Male to female ratio was 1.081. Among the total cases, 14(28%) cases were anaemic and remaining 36 (72%) caseswere non-anaemic. Among the anaemic cases, 5 cases (10%)were presented with upper RTI and remaining 9 cases (18%)were with lower RTI. A statistically significant difference(p=0.0247) could be evidenced between the RTI in anaemicchildren when compared to non-anaemic cases. Furthermore,the relative risk of incidence for RTI among the anaemicchildren was 0.4945 (95% CI= 0.2379-1.028) compared to thenon-anaemic cases.Conclusion: Association of relative risk for RTI amongthe children with anaemia was statistically significant whencompared to those without anaemia