Family dysfunction associated to asthma control in pediatric patients

Introduction. Asthma, is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Therefore it becomes a strategic objective of public health programs. Biopsychosocial stress and family dysfunction are considered some of the factors that lead to uncontrolled disease. We understand family dysfunction as a problem of interaction in the family itself and with the social structures that surround them. Objective. To determine whether there is a relation between asthma severity and family dysfunction as measured by the Family Function Scale (FFS). Method. Cross-sectional analysis of patients between 3 and 14 years of age studied at the Pediatric Pulmonologist Service of the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases to which we applied the FFS and the classification of asthma severity. Descriptive statistics and variable association were applied. Results. A total of 38 children were studied, most of them were 5 years old; 50% of patients had moderate persistent asthma and 26.3% severe persistent asthma. 50% yielded positive results in the FFS for family dysfunction. The odds ratio of family dysfunction and severe asthma resulted in 1.9 with a confidence interval for 95% of between 1. 2 and 2.9. Conclusions. The most relevant results indicated a strong relation between family dysfunction and asthma severity. We propose to include the study of this aspect in pediatric asthmatic patients to provide a more complete management and to reduce the severity of the disease.