BPPF congress calls for proper diagnosis of bronchiolitis

Though the number of children infected with bronchiolitis is increasing in the country, it is yet to be diagnosed properly and physicians especially at upazila and union level must be trained in this regard, said the experts at a congress yesterday.
They said most of the cases of bronchiolitis is diagnosed as pneumonia although management and counselling of these two diseases are quite different.
The 3rd National Congress and Scientific Session of Bangladesh Paediatric Pulmonology Forum (BPPF) was held at the Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Centre in the city.
The congress was aimed to make the doctors aware about the diagnosis and management of bronchiolitis and to limit the indiscriminate use of antibiotics as well as proper counselling to the parents by all categories of doctors particularly the paediatricians.
Prof Ruhul Amin, president of BPPF, said in the cases of bronchiolitis, antibiotic should not be prescribed, rather the patients with severe bronchiolitis need to be treated with oxygen therapy and salbutamol nebulisation.
"But still many doctors cannot detect bronchiolitis and just prescribe antibiotic that is supposed to be used for pneumonia. So it is a must to provide training to the doctors," he added.
The experts said a large number of doctors are misdiagnosing bronchiolitis as pneumonia and prescribing costly antibiotics, as there is no provision of diagnosing and managing bronchiolitis in the Integrated Management of Childhood Infections (IMCI) management protocol.
This year BPPF has conducted a research on the management of bronchiolitis without antibiotics, which was never done elsewhere outside the country, they added.
They also stressed the need for advanced respiratory laboratory and Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) to manage the children infected with severe RTIs in the country.
BPPF General Secretary Prof Lutful Kabir, Prof Mohammad Alauddin of USA, Dr Ryuichi Uchida of Japan, and Prof SK Kabra, Dr H Paramesh, Dr Goutam Ghosh, Dr Harsh Kandpal and Dr Chandan Jyoti Das of India also took part in the congress.