The hospitalization rate shows higher among infants exposed to smoking by their parents at home and in the absence of precautions smokers, says a study in Hong Kong and published in the "Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine ".

Passive smoking in infants causing more frequent hospitalizations

Given the difficulty to advance smoking cessation among parents and caregivers of children, some researchers have proposed approaches to reduce the harmful impact of smoking on the child, but the evidence remains scarce and controversial.

Gabriel Leung and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong (China) studied the effects of passive smoking and health smoking (that is to say that smoking more than 3 meters of the child) the health of newborns, as well as health expenditures related to these two parameters, following more than 8,000 newborns for 18 months.

Fathers and others in the household has been responsible for most of the exposure of infants to tobacco smoke: only 2.8% of mothers smoked after delivery and 4.6% had smoked for pregnancy.

According to this study, a new-born living in the same household as a smoker does not take special precautions (that is to say smoking within 3 meters of the baby) is at risk of hospitalization in its first 18 months of life than 28% that of a newborn brought up in a home without smoking.

Passive smoking infants accounted for 2.8% of hospital admissions for all infants less than one year and 616 additional admissions.

But this increased risk disappears if the smoker parent means he smokes more than 3 meters from the infant, which shows some effective strategies to reduce the harmful effects of passive smoking by hygiene measures.

The risk reduction strategy must be strictly adhered to when the complete cessation is not possible, therefore the authors recommend.