Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Marco Marruffo, MD, MS, DrPH¹, Carolina Alvarez-Garriga, MD, DrPH², Sandra Noffsinger², Raghbir Sandhu, MD, DrPH, DTM&H³, Antonio Rene, MPH, PhD⁴, Daisha Cipher, MS, PhD⁵, Federico Montealegre, DVM, MS, PhD⁶, and Manuel Bayona, MD, PhD². (1) Andean Health Organization. Hipólito Unanue Convention, Calle Antequera 777, Sexto Piso, Lima, 27, Peru, (2) School of Public Health, University of Nevada, Reno, Lombardi/ 274, Reno, NV 89557, (775) 784-4041 Ext. 249, calvarez@unr.edu, (3) Department of Epidemiology, University of North Texas, Health Science Center, School of Public Health, 3500 Camp Bowie Boulevard, EAD 701, Fort Worth, TX 76107, (4) Department of Epidemiology, Texas A & M School of Rural Public Health, 1266 TAMU, SRPH Building, College Station, TX 77843, (5) University of North Texas, Health Science Center, 3500 Camp Bowie Boulevard, Fort Worth, TX 76107, (6) Department of Microbiology, Ponce School of Medicine, P.O. Box 7004, Ponce, PR 00732

Asthma severity and mortality is increasing. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify and assess prognostic factors for severity and risk of death among 27,383 hospitalized asthma patients. Data was analyzed by means of multinomial logistic regression using minor risk as the reference group. Among other results, severe asthma cases were 20% more likely to be females and had 20% more probability to have HIV/AIDS. In addition, severe asthma cases have a 5.5 times grater probability of being obese, 4.2 times more likely to have esophageal reflux, 1.7 times more likely to be hypertensive, and 11.8 times more likely to have diabetes as compared to those without severe asthma (p < 0.001). Obese individuals were 2.8, diabetics 3.3, those with urinary tract infection 2.3, those with fever 3.1 and those with congestive heart failure 7.5 times more likely to have major risk of death due to asthma (p < 0.001). The results of this study can be used to identify high risk groups in whom urgent control measures must be applied to prevent severity and death due to asthma in the hospital setting.

Key Words: Asthma, clinical epidemiology, prognostic factors

Learning Objectives: