Changes of smoking habits in families of asthmatic children

Abstract

Introduction: smoking in the family directly affects the respiratory health of children and predisposes to childhood asthma. When talking about passive smoking as a risk factor to develop childhood asthma, family physicians make preventive actions of health education on the patient and family as well. Objectives: to evaluate changes in smoking habits done by families with asthmatic children, based on specific orientation given by the family physician about passive smoking as a risk factor. Material and methods: observational, descriptive, cross sectional and prospective study. The evaluated group was selected from the Jose Castro Villagrana Health Center and the Pediatric Hospital of Coyoacan, Mexico, since March 2007 to March 2008.Through a structured interview 100 questionnaires were applied to the same number of parents or tutors of asthmatic children from two to 14 years old who were exposed to smoking at home. Those selected children were attended by a family physician in a period of not less than six months. The information gathered was used to identify conditions related to smoking and bronchial asthma. Results: the families of the asthmatic children were informed about the passive smoking risk in 83% of the cases. The family physician orientation modified their smoking habits in 69.9% of the cases. The changes were: outdoor smoking (48.9%), decreasing number of cigarettes (31.5%), to avoid smoking near the child (10.5%) and quit smoking (9.2%). Relatives who modified their smoking habits were parents, mother predominance (81.5%) compared with the father (80.3%). When the change of smoking habits depended on only one member of the family, aunts/uncles (77.7%) and grand-parents (66.6%) did not modified them. Conclusions: family physician identifies smoking in a family as a risk factor to have childhood asthma and gives orientation. The change of smoking habits made in the family, in most of the cases, was outdoor smoking. It is important that health professionals should apply different strategies to bring about changes in smoking habits to benefit the asthmatic children as well as the families.