Introduction:

Currently, there are around 300 million people in the world diagnosed with asthma and a mortality rate of 250 thousand every year. Cuba is not apart from this reality.

Objective:

To relate the frequency of presentation of host- and environment-dependent risk factors with the degree of severity of crises among children.

Methods:

A cross-sectional and descriptive study was carried out with 600 children aged 1-18 years, who receive attention in the emergency department of Juan Manuel Márquez Pediatric Hospital from January to December 2018.

Results:

Most of the patients who received attention were male (53 %) and belonged to the age group of 5-9 years (46.3 %). Among the predominating risk factors of the study, the most frequent were viral infections (51.3 %), temperature changes (58.2 %) and non-adherence to treatment (45.5 %). Family history of bronchial asthma was found in 62.2 %, together with a history of atopy, accounting for 60 %.

Conclusions:

There are modifiable risk factors in asthma patients, which allows to decrease the severity of bronchial asthma in the emergency department.

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