Introduction: Parents play an important role in the management of their asthmatic children. Thus the ability of parents to recognise asthma trigger factors are very important.
Objectives: The objectives of this study were to identify the trigger factors that were recognised by parents to cause acute exacerbation in their children and analyse the association of these factors with severity of asthma and parental asthma knowledge.
Methods: Sixty-seven parents were interviewed to identify factors that can exacerbate acute asthmatic attack in their asthmatic children. The factors were then categorised as: infection, exercise, allergen, irritant, emotion and weather. The profiles of children were asthma severity status, duration of asthma, age, frequency of admission and steroid dosage. Parents' profiles were their age, number of asthmatic children and the level of asthma knowledge.
Result: Fifty-six (83.5%) parents identified more than one trigger factor for their children's exacerbation. The commonest frequency was two trigger factors (31.3%). Upper respiratory tract infection (77.6%) was the commonest trigger factor. There was no association between the number of trigger factors with the severity of asthma and level of parental asthma knowledge. The number of trigger factors significantly correlated with asthma duration (r = 0.33, p = 0.006). The asthma severity was associated significantly with weather (p = 0.042) but not with other trigger factors.
Conclusion: The majority of parents recognised more than one trigger factors to cause asthma exacerbation.