Number of asthma admissions to hospital falls

THE number of children admitted to hospital because of asthma has fallen.

A study carried out by the Health Intelligence Unit of the Health Research Board shows the last four years in particular witnessed a significant fall in children admitted to hospital affected by asthma.

According to the study by Dr Anne O’Farrell and Dr Davida De La Harpe, the provision of medication may have had a positive impact on numbers.

In the year 2000, 50,447 children received asthma medications which, by 2009, had increased to 73,184 children.

Also in 2000, the number of hospital discharges involving 2,241 children aged up to 15 years stood at 2,534 but, by 2009, this number had fallen to 1,799 discharges involving 1,565 children.

The hospitalisation rate has dropped considerably in the last four years, particularly in children from newborn to four-years-old.

The analysis on hospital discharges data shows boys are almost twice as likely as girls to have asthma.

The average length of hospital stay across the decade was two days, although this dropped significantly after 2006.

In all, some 46,363 bed days were used over the 10-year study period, while 155 (0.7%) discharges involved a stay in ICU, translating to 304 ICU bed days.

The study is the first of its kind in Ireland to look at prescribing patterns and hospital discharges.

The authors of the study, however, emphasised it cannot be considered representative of the entire population as the socially disadvantaged and elderly are over-represented in the prescribing data and this may have meant that the prescribing data for these children is not absolutely representative of all children.

They also said that since there was no data on emergency department attendances, the reduction in hospital admissions may also be due to better care in A&Es.

They are currently working with A&E consultants on deriving more data.

According to the report: “Further studies need to be carried out to determine if there has been a concomitant decrease in A&E admissions for paediatric asthma over the study time-period.

“The number and age standardised rate for hospital discharges for asthma has decreased significantly over the 10-year period — similar to findings in Finland.

“There has also been a significant increase in the number and rate of prescribing of asthma drugs.”