Role of the peripheral perfusion index in children with bronchial asthma.

Objective: Peripheral perfusion index (PI) is noninvasive method measuring peripheral blood volume in numerical form and indicating perfusion status. In this study, we have investigated whether the relationship between the measurements of PI and definition of bronchial asthma exacerbation classification and treatment.

Methods: This prospective study included in aged 5-12 years children applied to the hospital between January 2020 and June 2020. They were divided into two groups as patients who presented bronchial asthma symptoms and the control group who were selected as children applied to the hospital for routine healthy child follow-up. The severity of the asthma exacerbations was evaluated. Before administering nebulizer therapy, vital signs, oxygen hemoglobin saturation and PI values were recorded. Appropriate nebulizer treatment was initiated for the severity of exacerbation and subsequent changes in the PI values were recorded.

Results: Pretreatment PI values were higher in children with asthma than those in healthy children (p = 0.001). The PI measurements of the patients for diagnosing asthma exacerbation showed a statistically significant area under the ROC curve (p = 0.001), and AUC (0.842) values of the 2.25 cutoff point of the PI value were sufficiently high. In the ROC analysis conducted to determine the need for hospitalization in patients presented with asthma exacerbations, the area under the curve was statistically significant (p = 0.020), and AUC (0.830) values of the 3.25 cutoff point of the PI value were sufficiently high.

Conclusions: The PI measured in patients presented with asthma symptoms may use a valuable parameter for the diagnosing of asthma exacerbations and making hospitalization decisions.