Monitoring of Peak Expiratory Flow Rates during Asthmatic Children's Winter Camp

Kim, Jung Are; Ahn, Byoung Sun; Sohn, Keun Chan; Lee, Myeung Ik; Lee, Suk Joon

Abstract

PURPOSE
It is important in asthmatic children to encourage ordinary physical activity. However physical activities in winter are limited excessively by their parents for fear of bronchospasm by cold air and exercise. Children's asthma camps help them to learn about asthma management, make new friends with other asthmatic children, have positive attitude about the disease and have a more active lifestyle. But there have been few asthma camps and appropriate asthma camp programs have not been developed in Korea. Our study was done to see how camp programs influenced on asthma patient by measuring of PEFR during camp programs and thereby to have the data be used for future development of asthma camp programs.
METHODS
From January 19th to 22th 1998, we recruited for camp 17 asthmatic patients and 31 normal children who had no history of admission due to respiratory infection. The main camp programs consisted of skiing and sledding. PEFR was checked 5 times a day and we analyzed variation of PEFR in relation to daily activities, temperature, humidity of atmosphere.
RESULTS
1) The mean age was 8 years with a range of 5 years to 11 years with male predominance (male/female : 2.4/1) in asthma group and the mean age was 10 years with a range of 5 years to 16 years with female predominance (male/female: 1/2) in control group. 2) The mean PEFR (% predicted) was checked early morning, prior to breakfast, lunchtime, supper and at the end of the day's activities (before sleeping) were 90.43+/-24.15%, 93.48+/-19.42%, 98.99+/-25.89%, 96.77+/-21.23%, 100.9+/-20.86% in asthma group and 93.69+/-16.41%, 94.49+/-17.13%, 94.15+/-17.28%, 96.84+/-16.44%, 96.52+/-16.24% in control group. All values were within normal range and there was no significant change of the mean PEFR value in relation to daily activity. The values of PEFR were low at early morning. We have observed a significant difference of PEFR between early morning and before sleeping in asthma group (P<0.05). 3) In the asthma group, 2 cases had respiratory difficulty prior to lunchtime but symptoms were resolved after bronchodilator nebulization.
CONCLUSION
We recommend ski or sledding to be safe as one of the programs for asthma camp but control of asthma attack is needed because lung function is decreased at night and appropriate warming up is needed before cold air sports.