The Association Between Meteorological Factors and the Incidence of Spontaneous Pneumothorax in Adolescents

Abstract

In the research, the association between the meteorological factors, and the incidence of primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP) in childhood were examined. The data related to 103 patients who were in their childhood and had PSP were analyzed retrospectively by using the software of IBM SPSS Statistics 22. The meteorological data, which was obtained from the 1st Regional Directorate of Istanbul Meteorology, including the means of monthly atmospheric pressure (AP), temperature, wind speed, humidity, sunshine duration were compared with the data related to the days when PSP occurred. Shapiro Wilk test was used to determine the suitability of the data, while the Mann Whitney U test, Friedman test and Kruskal Wallis tests were used to compare the data. Significance was evaluated based on p<0.05. It was determined that PSP occurred more frequently in the summer months (June, July, August). Besides, it was found out that the AP was statistically significantly lower at 3 days before the occurrence of PSP compared to the days when PSP didn't occur (p <0.05). Moreover, it was identified that there was no correlation between the PSP, and the data comprising of temperature, humidity, wind speed, and duration of sunshine (p>0.05). It was found that PSP was associated with a decrease in atmospheric pressure 72 hours before the occurrence of pneumothorax in children, whereas it was not associated with temperature,
wind speed, humidity, duration of sunny and cloudy weather.