Asthma education reduces repeat emergency department visits among children

MedWire News: Educating young children and their parents about how to manage asthma can significantly reduce repeat hospital emergency department visits and admissions to hospital among children with the respiratory disease, results of a review show.

Previous studies have shown that asthma education programmes for adults can help reduce and prevent emergency department visits, but it was not known whether such programmes benefit children with the respiratory condition.

To investigate, Dr Michelle Boyd, from the Royal Children's Hospital in Herston, Queensland, Australia, and team searched medical research databases and identified 38 studies, involving 7843 children, that contained data on the effects of asthma education programmes on visits to the emergency department.

The studies evaluated a variety of education programmes, with interventions delivered to children, their parents or both, by medical professionals either in the emergency department, in the hospital, in homes or in community centers after an initial emergency department visit.

Such interventions included showing patients how to monitor their breathing, teaching them the importance of responding to early symptoms before they worsen and become an emergency and making environmental changes in the home, such as removing allergens and asthma triggers.

Analysis of the pooled findings showed that children who received asthma education after a visit to the emergency department made 27% fewer subsequent visits because of respiratory symptoms and were 21% less likely to be hospitalised because of their condition than those who received no asthma education.

Children who received asthma education also made significantly fewer unscheduled visits to their doctors than those who did not receive asthma education.

Dr Boyd and team conclude: “Asthma education aimed at children and their carers who present to the emergency department for acute exacerbations can result in lower risk of future emergency department presentation and hospital admission.”

However, they add: “There remains uncertainty as to the long-term effect of education on other markers of asthma morbidity such as quality of life, symptoms and lung function.”

Furthermore, they say that more research is needed to identify the type, duration and intensity of educational packages that are most effective at preventing visits to the emergency department.

The review is published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.