title: The clinical course of childhood asthma in association with fever.
abstract: Little attention has been given to the relationship between fever and the severity of asthma. The authors studied 202 successive admissions of children with asthma over a period of 16 months to investigate the relationship between fever and the clinical course of asthma. There were 38 febrile children (18.8%), who were mostly younger than 5 years. Febrile children had a shorter mean hospital stay than afebrile children (1.7 vs 2.0 days). There were 25 episodes of acute severe asthma (13%): 2 among the 38 febrile children (5.2%), compared with 23 episodes among the remaining 164 afebrile children (14%). Three children, who had very severe asthma requiring transfer to an intensive care unit, were afebrile. Radiological abnormalities (collapse/consolidation) occurred in 13 cases: 3 from the febrile and 10 from the afebrile group. Monitoring body temperature is important in cases of asthma. Febrile children tend to be younger and are more likely to have a less severe clinical course of asthma.
authors.affiliation: Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, Kent; Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich, Woolwich, London, United Kingdom. sahib.el-radhi@ hotmail.co.uk
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sahib El-Radhi
authors.forename: Swatee
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Patel
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D001249:Asthma / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000453:epidemiology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005334:Fever / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000821:virology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007902:Length of Stay / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000379:methods; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology