Introduction:

The acute respiratory infection includes numerous clinical syndromes that obey a variety of etiologies and range from mild to extreme severity. On a global scale, they are the main cause of health care demand in children under five years of age. The severe form is responsible for almost all avoidable deaths for this age group.

Objective:

To describe the clinical characteristics of severe acute respiratory infection in hospitalized children under five years in the Hospital General de Medellín.

Materials and methods:

Cross-sectional descriptive study, by reviewing medical records of 296 children aged 0 days to four years, hospitalized for severe acute respiratory infection between 2014 and 2015.

Results:

Bronchiolitis occurred in 83.1%, pneumonia in 16.5%; the masculine gender prevailed (57.4%) and ages between two and six months. The most frequent symptoms were cough, retractions, respiratory distress and tachypnea. The medical management was with oxygen by nasal cannula (88.3%), hypertonic nebulization (82.4%) and antibiotics (38.5%). On average hospital stay was 5.9 days and the requirement for intensive care units was 8.1%. March to May (months with rainy season) had 35% of hospitalizations

Conclusions:

Severe acute respiratory infection continues to be one of the main causes of emergency consultation in children under five years; unspecified bronchiolitis corresponds to infection that greater morbility generates in this group, increasing the number of cases during the rainy periods.

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