Study of risk factors leading to poor outcomes in severe pneumonia age 2M-60M in a tertiary care hospital

ABSTRACT

Background: Childhood pneumonia is the single leading cause of mortality in children aged less than 5 years. Most cases occur in India (43 million); pneumonia is responsible for about 19% of all deaths in children aged less than 5 years. According to Child Health and Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG) latest estimates, Pneumonia was responsible for 0.397 million of a total estimated 1.682 million under-five deaths in India.Methods: A hospital based prospective longitudinal study. In the present study 200 cases belong to age group 2 months to 5 years' fulfilling WHO criteria for pneumonia who were' attended to the department of paediatrics, Siddhartha medical college' from January 2017 to January 2018 were evaluated the risk factors in relation to their outcomes after obtaining consentResults: Out of 200 children with severe pneumonia' 11 risk factors are studied for significance against outcomes like Death of the patient, mechanical ventilation oxygen supplementation, hospital stay of patient and total duration of illness, Risk factors found to be significant are maternal literacy (p =0.0002617), malnutrition (p <0.00001), exclusive' breastfeeding (p <0.05), low birth weight (p <0.05), immunisation (p=0.01).Conclusions: Severe malnutrition, maternal illiteracy, exclusive breast feeding, improper immunization and low birth weight are having a significant association with poor outcomes in children with severe pneumonia. Proper preventive strategies to decrease the incidence of these risk factors can help in increasing the survival rate of children with severe pneumonia.