Allergy Asthma Respir Dis.  2015 Sep;3(5):334-340. 10.4168/aard.2015.3.5.334.

Clinical characteristics of patients with acute bronchiolitis who visited 146 Emergency Department in Korea in 2012

• Roh EJ
• Won YK
• Lee MH
• Chung EH

• KMID: 2218643
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4168/aard.2015.3.5.334

Abstract

PURPOSE
This study was aimed to investigate the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of the patients with acute bronchiolitis who visited in 146 Emergency Departments (EDs) in Korea in 2012.
METHODS
We used the NEDIS (National Emergency Department Information System) database to obtain all children with acute bronchiolitis who visited ED under the age of 3 between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012.
RESULTS
Totally 18,313 children with acute bronchiolitis were enrolled at this study. The male to female ratio was 1.55:1 and mean age was 10 months. The peak proportion was 17.3% in November during the whole year. The most common chief complaints were fever (38.5%), cough (37.4%), dyspnea (9.5%), gastrointestinal symptom (6.7%), and wheezing (2.5%). The most common accompanying disease was pneumonia (13.3%). The rate of hospital admission and intensive care unit admission were 34.5% and 0.3%, respectively. A predictor for admission via ED was respiratory difficulty.
CONCLUSION
These data expand our understanding of clinical characteristics of patients with acute bronchiolitis who visited all ED in Korea in 2012.

Keyword

Bronchiolitis; Emergency Department; Admission

MeSH Terms

Bronchiolitis*
Child
Cough
Dyspnea
Emergencies*
Emergency Service, Hospital*
Female
Fever
Humans
Intensive Care Units
Korea*
Male
Pneumonia
Respiratory Sounds

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Number of children brought to an Emergency Department with acute bronchiolitis by age group in 2012.

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  Fig. 2 Monthly distribution of Emergency Department visits for bronchiolitis according to age group in 2012.

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  Fig. 3 Chief complains of acute bronchiolits in children at Emergency Department presentation in 2012. GI, gastrointestinal; Sx., symptom; URI, upper respiratory tract infection.

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  Fig. 4 Admission rate of the ward and ICU in children brought to an Emergency Department with acute bronchiolitis by age group in 2012. ICU, intensive care unit.

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  Fig. 5 Monthly trends in the percentage of ward and ICU admission rate of children brought to Emergency Department with acute bronchiolitis in 2012. ICU, intensive care unit.

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