Predicting future acute care visit risk in kids with asthma (PARKA): a nested cohort study

Objectives — We aimed to develop a clinical risk score to predict future asthma acute care visits [emergency department (ED) visits or hospitalizations] within 1 year following a discharge from 1 of 2 tertiary care pediatric EDs in Ontario, Canada.

Methods — We assembled a nested Ontario cohort from the multicenter prospective DOORWAY cohort study and included children 1 to 17 years of age, with an ED visit for a moderate/severe asthma exacerbation. We linked this with provincial health administrative data. We used multivariable regression to derive and internally validate a practical clinical risk score to predict future asthma acute care visits.

Results — A total of 257 children [32% female, median age 3.0 years (IQR 1 to 7 y)] were included, and 58 experienced an asthma visit within the following year. These were best predicted by 4 factors: food allergy (OR 4.2, 95% CI: 1.2-14.9), family history of asthma (OR 0.5, 95% CI: 0.3-0.9), prior acute asthma medical visits (OR 2.8, 95% CI: 0.9-8.6), and prior emergency room visits for any respiratory diagnosis (OR 3.0, 95% CI: 1.4-6.4). A score of 0, 1, or 2 points was applied to each factor for up to a maximum of 6 points; the PARKA score has very good overall performance with a scaled Brier score of 0.11 on internal validation and good discrimination with an AUC of 0.72 (95% CI: 0.64-0.78).

Conclusions — The PARKA score predicts the risk of a future asthma acute care visit in a cohort of Ontario children with a moderate/severe asthma ED visit. Following external validation, this tool may aid ED clinicians in accurately targeting resource-intensive preventative interventions for at-risk children.