The Real Life Results Before COVİD-19 Pandemic (2012 September-2020 March)
There were 201 children who received SCIT injections between 2012 September, 2020 March. According to the demographic data there was a predominance of male gender (134, 66.7%). The median AIT start age was 12.8 (9.4-15.2) years and the median treatment duration was 40.7 (20.4-49.9) months. Of the patients, 47.8% had a family history of atopy. The demographic characteristics of the study participants are summarized in Table I.
The number of the patients treated with immunotherapy for allergic rhinitis, asthma and venom allergy were 154 (76,6%), 10 (5%) and 37 (18,4%), respectively. Regarding the immunotherapy composition, pollen immunotherapy was predominant (78.1%), followed by venom (18.4%) and house dust mite (3.5%). Ninety three patients (46,2%) completed the treatment and 108 patients continued to receive AIT during the course of the study. The overall compliance rate was 86.1%. Among the compliant groups, all patients had excellent compliance in first and second year of therapy. After two years of therapy, 93.6% of patients had excellent compliance and 4,6% and 1,5% had good and fair compliance, respectively. (Table III) Twenty eight patients(13.9%) stopped AIT before recommended time. Two patients dropped out in year 1 (0,99%), 10 in year 2 (5,8%), and 16 (10,8%), after 2 years of therapy. Cumulative proportions of patients who continue allergen immunotherapy over time was analyzed using Kaplan-Meier curves. (Figure I)
In the drop-out group AIT follow up time was significiantly low (p<0.001) whereas venom allergy and asthma were significiantly higher compared to compliant group (p<0.001). (Table I) Among the drop-out patients, moving to another city/country (32,1%) was the most frequent reason for drop-out. The other reasons included improvement of symptoms(17,8%), ineffectiveness of the therapy (14,2%), adverse reaction (14,2%), long distance to hospital (6,8%), frequency of injections (10,7%) and inability to access immunotherapy agent (3,5%). (Table II)