Abstract:

Background; Oxygen is commonly used therapeutic agent; it is used in the treatment of hypoxemia and is an essential lifesaving supportive treatment for children with hypoxemia. However it is not adequately available in many resource constrained health facilities thus impair its provision to the targeted patients. Oxygen like any other drugs should only be administered when indicated and at an appropriate dose as if unmonitored and unrestricted use can be potential harmful to patients. Excess of oxygen therapy might lead to physical, cytotoxic and functional risk. Every year over 5.9 million children die mostly from preventable diseases and more than 95% occur in developing countries. In these deaths there are a number of cases that were due to severe pneumonia in which hypoxemia is one of the complications(7).

Aim of the study; this research revealed baseline information on the magnitude of oxygen therapy and their immediate outcome among children admitted at Sengerema hospital. The results from this study may therefore be used to plan improvement in oxygen delivery system and monitoring hence improves patient care and outcome.

Methodology; Data was obtained from a cross sectional questionnaire that enrolled 295 participants who were admitted at SDDH with a follow up for up to 48 hours to determine the outcome of children on oxygen therapy. It was then analyzed using Stata/SE 14.0 and was summarized into tales and charts.

Results; among 295 participants involved in the study 23.7% were on oxygen therapy. Out of the tested variables only oxygen saturation less than 90% [OR=8.24, 95%CI=6.26-10.23, P=<0.01] was independently associated with oxygen administration. The common diagnoses whose patients were kept on oxygen therapy were only significant in multivariate and were severe pneumonia [OR=61.82, 95%CI=11.69-326.80, P<0.001], birth asphyxia [OR=22.92, 95%CI=10.61-49.51, P<0.001] and prematurity [OR=5.15, 95%CI=1.88-14.09, P=0.001]. Of all the patients who were kept on oxygen therapy 80% had improved after the 24 hours of follow up.

Conclusion; oxygen therapy is of necessity in the management of different pediatric conditions such as severe pneumonia, birth asphyxia and prematurity, and it also applicable in management of children admitted at SDDH bring about good outcome to those who meet the criteria for its administration. Also, the need for pulse oximetry is also of high importance as it can help in recognizing hypoxemia as seen from the study most of participants that had oxygen saturation less than 90% were kept on oxygen therapy.