Introduction: Influenza disease is subjected to surveillance by national networks (RC) that predict the epidemic behaviour by reporting clinical and virological data.
Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of the paediatric respiratory samples in the Balearic Islands RC in the last five epidemic seasons.
Material and patients: A breath sample was taken from paediatric patients in the RC who had flu symptoms. The samples were inoculated in the MDCK cell line. We reviewed the epidemiological data of patients with a culture positive to influenza A and B.
Results: A total of 338 pharyngeal swabs from the RC were analysed during the study period. Of these, 65 (19.3%) belonged to <14 years old patients, and 44.6% of the samples were positive as opposed to 39.1% of adult respiratory samples. The influenza A virus was isolated in 24 paediatric samples (82.7%) and the influenza B virus in 5 (17.3%). The mean age of the paediatric patients of the RC who were positive was 8.5 years. Only 3 patients in the 0-4 year old group were positive (10.3%) and 26 patients (89.7%) in the 5-14 years old group.
Conclusions: In spite that paediatricians represented only 22% of the RC doctors and obtain the 19.3% of all respiratory samples, the percentage and effectiveness of these is higher that that obtained in the adult population.