Asthma-Related Emergency Department Visits in North Carolina Following Hurricane Irene

Previous research suggests that people with asthma may experience a worsening of symptoms following hurricanes due to changes in environmental exposures, discontinuity in chronic disease management, and stress. The objective of this study was to estimate changes in asthma-related emergency department (ED) visits in North Carolina following Hurricane Irene, which made landfall in August 2011.

Changes in asthma-related ED visits in September to December of 2010 and 2011 were examined using data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Emergency Department and Inpatient Databases. A Poisson generalized linear model was used to estimate the association between Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster declarations following Hurricane Irene and county-level asthma-related ED visits controlling for month, year, and county.

Following Hurricane Irene, disaster declarations were made for 38 of 100 counties in North Carolina. In September 2010, the rate of asthma-related ED visits for North Carolina was 6 per 10,000 person-months. In September 2011, rates of asthma-related ED visits were similar in counties with and without disaster declarations (7 and 5 per 10,000 person-months, respectively). When adjusting for covariates, there was little or no difference in the rate of asthma ED visits before and after the hurricane between counties with and without a disaster declaration (rate ratio {RR} [95% confidence interval {CI}] = 1.02[0.97, 1.08]).

Although risk factors for asthma exacerbations increase following hurricanes, these results found little evidence of an increase in asthma-related ED visits in North Carolina following Hurricane Irene.