Chest
Original ResearchASTHMABody Mass Index and Response to Emergency Department Treatment In Adults With Severe Asthma Exacerbations: A Prospective Cohort Study
Section snippets
Subjects and Design
We evaluated all adult subjects with AA who attended to the ED of a tertiary-care general hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay, over a 2-year period (April 2002 to April 2004). The inclusion criteria for patients were as follows: (1) diagnosis criteria of asthma of the Global Strategy for Asthma Management and Prevention report14; (2) age 18 to 50 years; (3) peak expiratory flow (PEF) or FEV1 < 50% of predicted; and (4) written informed consent. Patients were excluded if they had a temperature >
Results
Four hundred twenty-six patients (mean, 33.4 years; 63% women) with severe asthma exacerbations (FEV1, 28.2% of predicted) were enrolled in the study. On the basis of previously determined criteria, 163 patients (38.3%) were classified as overweight/obese (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2). Comparisons of different variables stratified by BMI are shown in Table 1. Overweight/obese AA patients were significantly older, and more likely to be female than normal/underweight patients. Thus, women comprised 73.3% of
Discussion
The purpose of this study was primary to determine if overweight/obese adults with severe asthma exacerbations require longer duration of ED treatment, and have higher hospitalization rates compared with underweight/normal asthmatics. Our findings established that asthmatics with BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 showed significant increases in the length of ED stay and in the rate of hospitalization compared with normal/underweight patients, despite adjustments for other confounding variables. The effect of BMI
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The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.