Emergency admission to hospital for children with lower respiratory tract (LRT) infections (change in rate)

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Number of emergency admissions of children aged under 16 with lower respiratory infections per 100,000 resident children (age and sex standardised). Change in rate.

Rationale
Respiratory infections form one of the commonest reasons for hospital admission in childhood, especially in infants. Between 1% and 3% of all babies experience an admission with bronchiolitis and about 2.5% of all child admissions are for pneumonia. Emergency admission rates in children, especially those under 5 years old for lower respiratory infections – bronchiolitis, bronchopneumonia and pneumonia – reflect a variety of influences. Rates vary across the country but are increased in areas of socio-economic deprivation. They also vary between health economies even when social deprivation is taken into account, and then probably reflect variation in access to, and expectation of, health services, and also clinical practice. There are linkages between higher breast feeding and reduction of exposure to tobacco smoke – preventive measures which reduce both incidence and severity of infections. Much childhood morbidity and a significant proportion of childhood mortality results from these lower respiratory infections. Its choice as a clinical indicator will enable trends for improvement to be monitored which should result from a variety of current policy interventions in health promotion, health care and parental support.

Thresholds

Legend
Significantly below average	1	band e - the probability of this level of deterioration happening by chance is less than 1%
Below average	2	band d - the probability of this level of deterioration happening by chance is less than 5% but more than 1%
Average	3	band c - the level of improvement or deterioration is not statistically significant
Above average	4	band b - the probability of this level of improvement happening by chance is less than 5% and greater than 1%
Significantly above average	5	band a - the probability of this level of improvement happening by chance is less than 1%

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