As can be seen from a recent study published in Pediatrics (journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics), asthmatic children who are passive smokers are candidates to enter the hospital several times due to various associated complications.
Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Medical Center Hospital, and Penn State Milton S. Hershey Children's Hospital, are looking for ways to guide the interventions of parents (or caregivers) of children hospitalized with asthma before discharge, so that from then avoid smoking, given the responsibility they have on the little onesThree children from one to 16 years of age admitted to Cicinnati Children for asthma have been investigated during three months of 2011; subsequently they have been followed up for a year. From parents' responses about children's exposure to tobaccoIt was thought that there was no correlation between the contributions made and the income of the children.
But the levels of cotinine in blood and saliva were also measured, and it was the data obtained that alerted inherent risk of being exposed to tobacco smoke. Cotinine turns out to be a tobacco alkaloid, and one of the nicotine metabolites; thus its measurement is a reliable test.
It seems to me that the parents were not very aware of the damage they were causing, or did not want to alarm the doctors, since 40 percent of the children whose parents had claimed that their children were not exposed to tobacco, had positive levels of cotinine in blood The detection of metabolites in saliva yields a figure of up to 70%
Dr. Kahn, is associate director of general and community pediatrics at Cincinnati Children, and is also studying the association between childhood asthma readmissions and pollution, as well as racial and social differences between patients.
It is known that 10.3 percent of Spanish children under the age of 14 are exposed daily to tobacco smoke in their homes. The affected population is of pediatric age, and therefore is very vulnerable. We think that all dissemination of the problem is small, and especially if we talk about children who have asthma, with all that this disease entails.
Further, it's not just a matter of exposing children directly to insane adult habits to possible main or associated diseases, is that we offer them a bad model.
