Time trends in emergency department presentations of children with acute severe asthma in NSW

Abstract

It has been observed that the number of admissions of children to NSW hospitals for asthma increases sharply during the month of February. Recent anecdotal evidence suggested that this increase occurred again in 2001. Of greater concern, however, is the observation that the number of severe asthma episodes in children also rose sharply. This prompted an investigation to determine whether the reported peak was supported by the data routinely collected by the NSW Department of Health.