Etiology, Seasonality, and Clinical Features of Viral Respiratory Tract Infections in Children Hospitalized With Acute Bronchiolitis: A Single-Center Study

Gökçe, Sule; Kurugöl, Zafer; Koturoglu, Güldane; Çiçek, Candan; Aslan, Asli

Between April 2013 and April 2016, a total of 316 infants hospitalized with AB were included in this prospective study. The mean age was 7 ± 6.5 months; 201 (63.6%) were male ( Table 1 ). The most frequent age range of infants with AB was 1 to 6 months, accounting for 63.6% of all included cases. Most of the patients had cough and runny nose on admission to hospital. Nearly half of the infants diagnosed with AB were exposed to passive smoking. There was a history of atopy in 12% of all the infants. Table 2 shows the clinical data and laboratory findings, disease severity scores, hospitalization rates, and duration of hospitalizations of the infants. The most common complaint of the patients was cough (100%), and fever was present only in 88 (27.8%) of all the cases on admission to hospital. On examination, the percentage of infants with wheezing was 58. Ninety-six (30.4%) infants needed oxygen supplementation, and the mean length of hospitalization duration was 7.5 days. More than half of the infants had moderate bronchiolitis and the mean respiratory score was 5.3.