Mitchell et al found that medical treatment and management themselves did not seem to influence readmissions and concluded that strategies to reduce the high readmission rate for asthma in childhood needed to be developed.6 They identified several risk factors for readmission of children with asthma, including demographic characteristics (being female and being less than 5 years old), severity of the asthma (the need for intravenous treatment), and the number of previous admissions (reflecting either the severity of asthma or illness related behaviour).6 A more recent study in Canada also concluded that further studies were required to identify factors associated with increased readmissions among children, particularly girls.7 Between the ages of 10 and 14 years, girls had a greater rate of readmission than boys. One explanation for this finding was that although asthma may be more prevalent in boys than in girls, as judged by overall hospital admission rates, its severity, rate of onset of acute attacks, or illness related behaviour may be different for girls, leading to more readmissions.
Younger children had a greater rate of readmission than older children.6 7 This could in part be explained by the episodic nature ofpreschool asthma and its poor response to preventive treatment.8