ArticleCMAJ open
The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric asthma-related emergency department visits and hospital admissions in Montréal, Quebec: a retrospective cohort study.
Article in CMAJ open. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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4 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trends in asthma exacerbations in children before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.Epidemiology and infection · 2025Article
- Factors associated with asthma attack recurrence in Ecuadorian children: longitudinal study of potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.BMJ open respiratory research · 2025Article
- Using mHealth to Predict Asthma Exacerbations in Children and Adolescents (Mobile Health for Kids With Asthma): Protocol for an Observational Study.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- All-cause hospital admissions and incidence of asthma in children in Kazakhstan: a population-based retrospective cohort study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAsthma is a chronic respiratory condition that affects 10% of Canadian children and is often exacerbated by viral respiratory infections, prompting concerns about the severity of SARS-CoV-2 disease in children with asthma. We compared sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of children presenting to the emergency department and the incidence of these visits, before and during the pandemic.
methodsWe included children aged 0 to 17 years presenting with asthma to 2 tertiary pediatric emergency departments in Montréal, Quebec, between the prepandemic (Jan. 1, 2017, to Mar. 31, 2020) and pandemic (Apr. 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021) periods. We compared the number of emergency department visits and hospital admissions with an interrupted time series analysis and compared the sociodemographic characteristics based on the Canadian Index of Multiple Deprivation (CIMD) and clinical characteristics (including triage level, intensive care admissions, etc.) with Mann-Whitney and χ
resultsWe examined 22 746 asthma-related emergency department visits. During the pandemic, a greater proportion of patients presented a triage level 1 or 2 (19.3% v. 14.7%) and were admitted to the intensive care unit (2.5% v. 1.3%). The patients' CIMD quintile distributions did not differ between the 2 periods. We found a 47% decrease (relative risk [RR] 0.53, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.37 to 0.76) in emergency department visits and a 49% decrease (RR 0.51, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.76) in hospital admissions during the pandemic.
interpretationThe decrease in asthma-related emergency department visits was observed through the third wave of the pandemic, but children presented with a higher acuity and with no identified sociodemographic changes. Future studies are required to understand individual behaviours that may have led to the increased acuity at presentation observed in this study.
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