Abstract
There is an increasing evidence that passive smoking is involved in the etiology of childhood asthma and may be related to its severity and to pulmonary function limitation. Purpose: To evaluate if environmental tobacco smoke exposure could be a risk factor for childhood asthma admission. Methods: We characterise the smoking habits of 128 families of children (mean age 4.3 years), admitted to hospital for asthma, during a period of two years, correlating the obtained data with a sample of families of asthmatic outpatients, matched by age, gender and socio-economical conditions. Results: We found in the in-patient families a smoking prevalence of 80% vs 46% in the out-patient families (p<0.0001). The asthmatic children with passive tobacco smoke had a relative risk of 4.6 (95%CI = 2.6-8.0) to hospital admission. In most of the cases, the father was responsible for tobacco consumption (65% in in-patients vs 38% in outpatients - p<0.0001; OR = 3.0, 95%CI = 1.8-4.9). In mothers, the higher prevalence of smoking habits was identified among the hospitalised children (35% vs 23% - p = 0.04; OR = 1.8, 95%CI = 1.0-3.1). Conclusion: Passive parental smoking, namely from the mother, is an significant risk factor for childhood asthma severity. The prevention of exposition must be the goal to achieve. REV PORT PNEUMOL 2001; VII (1):
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