Background: Asthma and obesity are common health problems in children. This study investigated the impact of obesity on children hospitalized with acute asthma exacerbation.
Methods: We obtained the hospital discharge records of inpatients aged 3-8 years with a diagnosis of asthma using a national inpatient database in Japan. The patients were classified into underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese groups using weight for height and body mass index for age provided by the World Health Organization. We compared 30-day re-admission, need for intensive care, mean total hospitalization costs, and length of hospital stay between the 4 groups using multivariable regression models.
Results: Overall, 38 679 patients were identified, including 3177 underweight, 28 904 normal weight, 3334 overweight, and 3264 obese patients. The obese group showed significantly higher 30-day re-admission (adjusted odds ratio, 1.26; 95% confidence interval, 1.03-1.54) and longer length of stay (adjusted difference, 0.12 days; 95% confidence interval, 0.10-0.20 days) than the normal weight group. The threshold was a 91st percentile of weight for length or body mass index for the relationship with 30-day re-admission. No significant difference was observed between the 4 groups regarding the need for intensive care and total hospitalization costs.
Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that obesity was a risk factor for repeated admissions caused by asthma in children, indicating the importance for the prevention of pediatric obesity.
Keywords: Diagnosis Procedure Combination inpatient database; asthma; children; obesity.
© 2017 EAACI and John Wiley and Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd.