The Geography of Guardianship: A Rural Psychiatry Perspective on Decision-Making for Older Adults With Cognitive Decline.

Despite the continuous progress made in the last few decades in the diagnosis, management, and therapy of asthma, children and adolescents still die of this chronic respiratory disease. The rate of mortality due to asthma varies greatly among different Countries. Data regarding death due to asthma in pediatric patients are scattered because no official worldwide registry exists. As reported by the European Union Statistics Database [], in Italy a 0.6 per 100,000 individuals mortality rate per year was reported both for males and females (0.5 for males and 0.7 for female, respectively); however, these data included all age ranges. Several risk factors have been identified in the literature as being associated with increased risk of asthma-related mortality: previous severe exacerbations requiring hospitalization or intensive care or mechanical ventilation, poor adherence to therapy, over reliability on short-acting beta-2 agonists (SABA), low socio-economic status and male sex [–]. Moreover, environmental factors, such as air pollution and allergen exposure have been implicated [].