Disease Severity of Children Attending the Pediatric Sickle Cell Clinic of a Tertiary Health Institution in Southwest Nigeria

Abstract

Sickle cell disease is the most common hemoglobinopathy worldwide. Its effects are pan-systemic, affecting every organ in the body; hence, the manifestations are variable and diverse. A scoring parameter is needed to group patients into similar severity brackets for prognostic purposes.

Aim

This study aimed to determine the severity score of children attending the Pediatric sickle cell clinic of a tertiary institution using an existing set of scoring parameters.

Materials and Methods

This was a cross-sectional study that involved 100 children attending the sickle cell clinic of a tertiary institution in Nigeria. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to obtain relevant sociodemographic data.

We determined the clinical severity of the population using a set of clinical-laboratory parameters. Data were analyzed using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 25.0 for Windows. The level of significance was set at P < 0.05.

Results

Most of the children (80; 80%) had a mild index of disease severity. Age, gender, and social class did not significantly affect disease severity. However, a low white blood cell (WBC) count predicted mild disease severity.

Conclusion

Our study showed that most of the children had a mild index of disease severity, and this was predicted by a low WBC count.