Pneumonia is a frequent cause of hospitalization and illness amongst children, with incidence of 4% per year under the age of 5, 2% per year in children 5-9 years of age and 1% per year in older children and adolescents.[1] Out of these a small number of patients develop persistent and recurrent pneumonia, which presents a big challenge for physicians to manage and diagnose.
A proper approach to face this challenge first requires a proper definition of the term recurrent pneumonia. Pneumonia is as an acute illness characterized by cough, fever and tachypnoea in a generally unwell child, with labored breathing or abnormalities (bronchial or diminished breath sounds or crackles) on chest auscultation.[2] Recurrent pneumonia is defined as two or more episodes of pneumonia in a year, or three or more ever, with radiographic clearing between occurrences, and is reported in 7–9% of children with pneumonia.[3,4] It is common practice to investigate the immune and respiratory systems in children with recurrent pneumonia.[3,4]
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Breast feeding and recurrent pneumonia
In developing countries, the incidence and mortality rate of childhood pneumonia are 10 times higher than in developed countries.[5] Malnutrition is thought to be the underlying cause of approximately half of the fatal acute lower respiratory tract infections. Nutritional determinants of the global acute lower respiratory infection disease burden in children less than 5 years old is a lack of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months.[6,7] Hence in our study we will investigate if there’s any relevant correlation between breast feeding in patients with recurrent