Time to recovery and predictors of severe community-acquired pneumonia among pediatric patients in Debre Markos referral hospital, North West Ethiopia: A retrospective follow-up study

by Belayneh Mengist, Mulugeta Tesfa, Bekalu Kassie

Globally, pneumonia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among children which leads to over 156 million episodes and 14.9 million hospitalizations each year. Besides this fact, the recovery time and predictors of children’s hospitalization related to severe community-acquired pneumonia is not well known. Therefore, the aim of this study was to estimate the median time to recovery and its predictors among severe community-acquired pneumonia patients admitted to the pediatric ward, Debre Markos referral hospital, North West Ethiopia.

An institution-based retrospective follow-up study was employed among 352 records of children who were admitted starting from January 2016 to December 2018. Patients' charts were retrieved using a structured data extraction tool. Cox proportional hazard model assumption and model fitness was checked. Stratified Cox regression was fitted as a final model. Hazard ratio with its 95% confidence interval was used and P-value < 0.05 was considered as a statistically significant association.

The overall median recovery time was 4 days IQR (3–7). Recovery rate from severe community acquired pneumonia was 16.25 (95% CI: 14.54–18.15) per 100 person day observation. Age (AHR; 0.94 95% CI (0.90–0.98)), being stunted (AHR; 0.62 95% CI (0.43–0.91)), presence of danger sign at admission (AHR; 0.61 95% CI (0.40–0.94)), late presentation to seek care(AHR; 0.64 95% CI (0.47–0.88)) and co-morbidity (AHR; 0.45 95% CI (0.35–0.58)) were significant predictors of recovery time.

The median recovery time from severe community-acquired pneumonia was long so that measures to reduce recovery time should be strengthened.