| Methods |
Country: Canada
Setting: hospital and home, asthma management programme
RCT |
| Participants |
95 children admitted to hospital in the previous 5 years with asthma, along with their parents (not all smokers) |
| Interventions |
Intervention: cared for by a paediatric respiratory physician through the 12‐month study period. In addition, seen at clinic visits and visited at home by a nurse co‐ordinator who provided written information about asthma care and carried out an asthma educational session around lung and airway anatomy, asthma episodes, and treatment. Participant's home visited at least 3 times. Environmental exposures checklist drawn up; role of cigarette smoke discussed; parents discouraged from smoking in the home and encouraged to participate in a smoking cessation programme
Control: participants managed by their usual primary care physicians and reviewed by the study physician at intervals |
| Outcomes |
At 12 months:
• Exposure to ETS at home
(Primary study outcomes were related to asthma management.) |
| Type of intervention |
Child with health problems (respiratory disorders) |
| Notes |
|
| Risk of bias |
| Bias |
Authors' judgement |
Support for judgement |
| Random sequence generation (selection bias) |
Low risk |
"A process of restricted randomization based on age and number of previous hospitalizations during the previous 5 years was carried out. Subjects were alternately assigned to study or control groups, with the initial assignment for each pair determined by a coin toss." |
| Allocation concealment (selection bias) |
Low risk |
See above. |
| Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias)
All outcomes |
Low risk |
Low dropout ‐ 3 lost from each group |
| Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias)
All outcomes |
Low risk |
Smoking status reliant on self‐report; however, no evidence of effect, so differential misreport judged to be unlikely |
