Abstract
Background: This analyses aimed to examine the effectiveness of one parental smoking reduction bundle in children’s medical-care visits, respiratory tract infection (RTI), and spirometry results.
Methods: This RCT recruited smoking parents and their children from the paediatric units of Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong. Participants were allocated randomly into the intervention or control group. Our intervention included motivational interviews on smoking reduction with emphasis on health hazards related to children’s passive smoke exposure, and the provision of nicotine patches. Data were collected with interviews and spirometric measurements at the baseline and end-line visits, including demographics, smoking conditions, children’s medical-care visits and RTI during the study, and children’s pre- and post-intervention spirometry results.
Results: 196 paediatric patients (mean age: 4.96±4.1 yrs.) and their smoking parents (mean age: 37.6±7.6 yrs.) were included. Most of the parents were daily smokers with moderate nicotine dependence levels. No significant difference in terms of children’s respiratory symptoms, sick visits and hospitalisations was identified, though there were fewer episodes of all-cause hospitalisation in the intervention children (58.8%) than the control (66.7%). Only 19 children in the intervention and 15 in the control were able to perform spirometry at both baseline and end-line visits, and no significant difference in the spirometry results between groups was found.
Conclusion: Children’s health outcomes such as medical-care visits, RTI symptoms and spirometry results are less likely to be changed with a half-year intervention.
Footnotes
Cite this article as Eur Respir J 2022; 60: Suppl. 66, 1608.
This article was presented at the 2022 ERS International Congress, in session “-”.
This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only).
- Copyright ©the authors 2022