Oral Prednisolone Dosing in Children Hospitalized With Asthma

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2006-11-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

This study hopes to determine the appropriate oral steroid dose for treating children hospitalized with asthma exacerbations. Practice guidelines from different countries recommend a wide range of doses, and the doses used in actual practice vary widely. There is no data on what is the most appropriate dose of prednisone (or equivalent) in this situation. We will be looking at the dose recommended by the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program guidelines, which are published by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, as compared with a lower dose which is commonly used in practice. We hypothesize that the lower dose will be no worse than the higher dose as determined primarily by duration of hospitalization.

• Phase: Phase 4
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: No

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
• Treatments: Methylprednisolone; Methylprednisolone Acetate; Methylprednisolone Hemisuccinate; Prednisolone; Prednisolone acetate; Prednisolone hemisuccinate; Prednisolone phosphate

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• Physician-diagnosed asthma with at least two previous visits to ED or primary care provider for asthma care

• Clinical decision by ED attending physician to admit to Acute Care Unit (ACU) after standardized initial ED treatment

Exclusion Criteria:

• Clinical decision to begin continuous intravenous beta-agonist infusion

• Clinical decision to begin intravenous methylprednisolone therapy

• Clinical decision to admit to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

• Other concurrent disease such as sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, or cardiac disease

• Any contraindication to corticosteroid administration

• Any systemic corticosteroid treatment within two weeks of presenting to the ED

• Potential subjects will be excluded if informed consent is not obtained