Red Cell Distribution Width and Respiratory Diseases in Tobruk Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

• Nasren Gamal Saleh Alfraik Alfraik

  Faculty of Medicine, Pediatric Department, Tobruck University, Tobruck, Libya..

  Author

The red blood cell distribution width (RDW) is a simple and inexpensive parameter, which reflects the degree of heterogeneity of erythrocyte volume. This retrospective study aimed to detect the correlation between RDW and respiratory diseases and analyzed all patients admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Tobruk Medical Center between January 2017 and January 2019. All patients below 16 years old with an available baseline RDW value on admission to PICU and had had a respiratory disease and needed oxygen therapy were eligible for inclusion. Of the 76 patients studied, 36.8% had elevated RDW. The median age was 97.5 days old, 60.5% were male, and 39.4% females. All patients were Libyan and 97.4% from Tobruk. Causes of admission were 52.6% bronchopneumonia, 29% acute broncholitis, 10.5% aspiration pneumonia, 5.3% bronchial asthma, and CHD with apnea were 2.7%. We noted a respiratory retraction in most of the cases, grunting and retraction in 35%, and cyanosis in 28% of cases. Reported complications of this study were sepsis 41%, aspiration 24%, pneumothorax 10.5%, convulsion 9%, apnea 8%, pleural effusion 7% and renal failure 1%. 62% of our patients had pulmonary infiltration on chest x-ray. Regarding the route of oxygen therapy, 60.5% were treated with nasal prongs, 38% with masks, and 1.3% needed a mechanical ventilator. 29% of patients received steroids. The RDW mean was 14.499 and there were significant correlations between RDW and signs of respiratory distress, length of hospital stay, and duration of oxygen therapy. 98% of our patients were discharged. We conclude there is a strong correlation between RDW and respiratory diseases as pneumonia, acute broncholitis and we recommend farther studies to study the correlation between RDW and other organ diseases in the pediatric age group. 

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