Frequency of Cystic Fibrosis in Children with Recurrent Respiratory Infections by Sweat Chloride Testing: A Hospital-Based Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Objective: This study was designed to find out the frequency of cystic fibrosis in children with recurrent respiratory infections by performing a sweat chloride test.Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out from 1st September 2015 to 28th February 2016 in the department of Pediatric Medicine at the Children’s Hospital and the Institute of Child Health, Lahore after ethical approval. A total of 300 cases of recurrent respiratory tract infections were included. The sweat chloride test was done by using pilocarpine-induced iontophoresis and measuring chloride levels on the forearm or thigh by sweat analyzer at the time of induction. Cystic fibrosis was labeled if sweat chloride level ranges above 60 mEq/L. Data was collected on Performa and SPSS version 23 was used to analyze the data. Results: Mean age of patients was 6.24 ± 2.7 years with 52.7% males and 47.3% females. Most patients (86.3%) have more than 5 episodes of respiratory infection in a year. Cystic fibrosis was diagnosed in 19 (6.3%) patients. There was no relationship between the frequency of respiratory infections in a year and cystic fibrosis (p-value 0.78).Conclusion: This hospital-based study showed quite a high incidence of cystic fibrosis in our population. So facilities including neonatal screening along with sweat chloride testing and genetic analysis should be increased.