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the same for the children with asthma as those undertaken in the healthy children. I will
present the results and discuss the findings comparing our results with those then published
looking at similar groups of children.
8.2
Prospective ethical approval for the study was given by the Royal Brompton Hospital Ethics
Committee (Royal Brompton Hospital, Sydney St, London SW3 6NP, United Kingdom; now
Royal Brompton and Harefield National Health Trust)'
The subjects were recruited from a local school ("Park walk Primary school"' South
Kensington, London) within walking distance of the hospital. Following our initial approach
and discussion with the school board, the principal and the teachers of the children in the age
groups that we were hoping to enrol, a pamphlet about the study and a questionnaire were sent
home with childre n in 2classes aged 9-11 years to their parent/s or caregiver/s (Appendix 2)'
The school was familiar with the hospital and had been involved in previous (completely
separate) research. Two of the class teachers had participated in an "Asthma at school"
education programme run by myself and the respiratory nurse specialist (Ms Lizzie Webber)
at the Royal Brompton Hospital which ran for three years and was open to teachers in primary
schools throughout London.
Each child particiPated if:
o He/she had returned a signed consent and a questionnaire filled out by their parent/s'
o He/she was willing to be part of the study'
o He/she had permission of the class teacher to attend the hospital for an hour'
o He/she had no recorded respiratory, cardiac or other major chronic disease' (The
exception was children with asthma who were later recruited into the second part of
this studY).
o He/she had no upper or lower respiratory tract infection for at least four weeks'
The children were walked by the investigators from the school to the hospital, completed the
study and returned to the school always having been in our care' The children attended the
hospital in pairs from 1030 hours to 1200 hours and were returned in time for lunch break'
The aim was to enrol at least 30 paediatric subjects'
The results were analysed using the Statistical Products and services solutions, (Package u
7.0, SPSS Inc, Chicago, uSA). This employs Students t-test for matched pairs with mean'
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