Severe Acute Asthma Exacerbation in Children: A Stepwise Approach for Escalating Therapy in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

OBJECTIVES An increasing prevalence of pediatric asthma has led to increasing burdens of critical illness in children with severe acute asthma exacerbations, often leading to respiratory distress, progressive hypoxia, and respiratory failure. We review the definitions, epidemiology, pathophysiology, and clinical manifestations of severe acute asthma, with a view to developing an evidence-based, stepwise approach for escalating therapy in these patients. METHODS Subject headings related to asthma, status asthmaticus, critical asthma, and drug therapy were used in a MEDLINE search (1980–2012), supplemented by a manual search of personal files, references cited in the reviewed articles, and treatment algorithms developed within Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. RESULTS Patients with asthma require continuous monitoring of their cardiorespiratory status via noninvasive or invasive devices, with serial clinical examinations, objective scoring of asthma severity (using an objective pediatric asthma score), and ap...