There is no denying that second hand smoke is not good for the health, especially to children. However, there is more to that, as a new analysis revealed that children with asthma nearly double the risk of being hospitalized when exposed to second hand smoke.
Second hand smoke can worsen symptoms and make a child's condition even more difficult to control, U.S News reports. Thus, researchers are warning parents about this fact.
"Previous studies have linked second hand smoke exposure with increased asthma prevalence, poorer asthma control and increased symptoms," said Zhen Wang study lead author from the Mayo Clinic in Rochers, Minn., in an American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology news release.
"We wanted to quantify the strength of the association, and to show just how much greater the risk is of hospitalization for kids with asthma who are exposed to second hand smoke in the home," Wang added.
According to ScienceDaily, the researchers reviewed 25 studies examining smoking exposures at home. Over 43, 000 children were involved in the review, with a mean age of 7.6. Majority of the studies about 96 percent investigated smoking exposure at home.
"This study helped us quantify that risk, and so it informs as well as empowers us with the risk assessment. A child is twice as likely to end up in the hospital with an asthma flare if family members continue to smoke," said Avni Joshi, M.D., senior author and pediatric allergist and immunologist at Mayo Clinic Children's Center.
Joshi stressed that the study also increases the burden of disease on the healthcare system with increased rates of hospitalization. Moreover, she also explained that when children are sick, they absent from school, and parents will miss their work. Thus, it creates a big financial burden to the family and to the society as a whole. She also added that when a child is hospitalized, he or she has a high risk of hospital-acquired infection, which is a fairly serious issue.
Joshi is encouraging parents to do a lifestyle change and quit smoking, after all, it is already a known fact that exposing children to tobacco is unhealthy.
Recognizing that quitting smoke is a painstaking struggle, Joshi and her team worked with Nicotine Dependence Center and the Center for Innovation at Mayo to develop a program that would assist families in starting their effort to tobacco control.
The said program provides nicotine counseling, nicotine replacement supplies free of cost to family members with asthmatic children during the child's appointment in their children's center. The said program focuses on the children, as Joshi puts it, many people do not change for themselves but do so, for their children.
The study is published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
