Title: A Study of the Clinical Characteristics of Hospitalized Pneumonia Patients in Alexandria University Children's Hospital
Authors: Maged Mohamed Eissa, Doaa Abd-El Moez Heiba, Mai Farag Mohamed Hassanein
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v5i9.168
Abstract
Pneumonia is considered the most common cause of death due to infection among children under five. About 2 million episodes of pneumonia occur among children under 5 years old annually in Egypt The objectives of this study were to study the clinical characteristics of pneumonia patients and to evaluate the applied clinical practices in the management of these cases. This was done through prospectively collecting demographic and clinical details for pneumonia cases aged 29 days-15 years during the winter season of 2015-2016.It was found that among 130 subjects, the male-to-female ratio was 1:1, patients aged ≤ 2 years comprised 69.2% of the cases, the most common symptoms were cough and fever and 71.5% had co-morbid conditions. The most commonly used antibiotic was Ceftriaxone and most of the cases were treated using combined antibiotics. However, 11.5% died, while 22.3% had complications. The hospital stay duration had a mean of 6.92 ± 7.56 and the difference in mean hospital stay duration between cases of isolated pneumonia versus cases of pneumonia with an associated illness was statistically nonsignificant . This can lead to the conclusion that pneumonia is more common in infants and in children with co-morbid conditions and that pneumonia cases having other associated illnesses don't necessitate longer duration of hospital stay.
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