Predictors for the Severity of Asthma in the Hospital Setting. An Epidemiologic Study Based on Hospital Records from the Texas Health Care Information Council

Marruffo, Marco, Predictors for the Severity of Asthma in the Hospital Setting. An Epidemiologic Study Based on Hospital Records from the Texas Health Care Information Council. Doctor of Public Health (Epidemiology), May 2005, 118 pp., 40 tables, 3 figures, bibliography, 62 titles. The purpose of this research was to identify and assess prognostic factors for severity and risk of death among 27,383 hospitalized asthma patients in the state of Texas during 2002, by using the public available Texas Hospital Inpatient data, collected by The Texas Health Care Information Council (TCHIC)(TCHIC, 2002). 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, 20% more probability to have HIV/AIDS, 5.5 times more chance to be 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 [less than] 0.001). Obese 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 [less than] 0.001). The results of this study can be used to identify high risk groups to plan and applied control measures for tertiary prevention of severity and death due to asthma.