Seasonal variations and trends of pediatric diseases from 2005-2013 at a tertiary care hospital of Peshawar
Keywords:
Medical Audit; Seasons; Periodicity; Gastroenteritis; Respiratory Tract Infections; Asthma; Typhoid Fever; Diarrhea; Hepatitis; PediatricsAbstract
Introduction: Seasonal disease variations can assist in identifying potentially preventable determinants of these diseases. The excess number of presentations and admissions in certain seasons establishes the proportion of the burden of disease that might be preventable.
Objective: To determine the seasonal variability of high frequency diseases in children admitted to the Pediatric department of a tertiary care hospital of Peshawar.
Materials & Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted in the Pediatric Department of Rehman Medical Institute (RMI) Peshawar, from January to June 2017 on secondary data of the departmental database (years 2005 – 2013) and analyzed through SPSS v23 for descriptive statistics and trends; trend charts depicting seasonal variation of pediatric diseases were constructed through MS Excel sheets.
Results: Twenty-six thousand eight hundred and ten (26,810) cases were collected for the study period. Acute Gastroenteritis had 3456 (12.9%) cases, Respiratory Tract infections 2441 (9.1%) cases, Enteric fever 1439 (5.4%) cases, Asthma 867 (3.2%) cases, Diarrhea 773 (2.9%) cases and Hepatitis A 678 (2.5%) cases. Morbidity of Acute Gastroenteritis was high in Spring and Summer seasons and another peak was noticed in the Autumn season. Upper respiratory tract infections were high in Spring and early onset of Winter season. Enteric fever was high throughout the Spring and hot Summer seasons, and low in Winter. Asthma was high throughout the Spring season, suddenly flattening in Summer, again rising in Autumn and early Winter. Diarrhea showed a rising trend in Spring and was high in Summer, while in Winter it was low. Hepatitis A was noticed in Summer and persisted till early Autumn.
Conclusion: Obvious seasonal trends of variations were seen for the common childhood diseases, which should help in better prevention and management thereby reducing the likelihood and morbidity of the diseases.
