Prevalence, Predictive Factors, and Outcomes of Respiratory Failure in Children With Pneumonia Admitted in a Developing Country

Pneumonia has been the leading infectious cause of morbidity and mortality in children under 5 years of age for the last several decades. Although most of these deaths occur due to respiratory failure, published data are limited regarding predicting factors and outcomes of respiratory failure in children hospitalized with pneumonia or severe pneumonia. This study aimed to explore the prevalence, predicting factors, and outcomes of respiratory failure in children under-five with pneumonia or severe pneumonia. In this retrospective chart analysis, we enrolled children under 5 years of age hospitalized with pneumonia or severe pneumonia in the Dhaka Hospital of International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) between August 2013 and December 2017. Comparisons were made between children with respiratory failure ( = 212) and those without respiratory failure ( = 4,412). Respiratory failure was defined when the oxygen saturation/fraction of inspired oxygen (SpO /FiO ) was