Extract
Asthma is one of the commonest paediatric diseases of Western Europe affecting some 20% of children in the UK [1], 7% in Sweden [2], 13% in Germany [3] and 10% in Italy [4], and whether the trend is still rising, plateauing or slightly falling, it still affects an awful lot of children. Even more importantly it still kills far too many people: in the UK there are ∼5 deaths per 1 000 000 children aged 0–19 years [5], which is similar to USA [6], but only 0.19 deaths per 1 000 000 in Finland equating to only four child deaths in the whole country for the 16-year period to 2015 [7]. In 2017, in London alone I was aware of eight paediatric asthma deaths. In summary, this is a children's tragedy.
Abstract
“It is a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.” In paediatric asthma, patients don't take their treatments and doctors rarely ask the right questions. The end result is far too many child deaths. http://ow.ly/OaGK30kFtsD
Footnotes
Conflict of interest: None declared.
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