Is your child’s absence from school due to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

An interesting revelation from the BMJ this week was that children with the greatest absence from school may benefit from screening for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).

Researchers from the University of Bristol set out to discover whether it would be worth setting up clinics within schools to help identify CFS by looking at the absence records of nearly 3000 school children and they turned out some interesting results.

Absence of 1 day a week or more could indicate CFS

All of the children with unexplained absences of greater than 20% (equivalent to 1 day per week or more) were screened and it was found that 6.1% were identified as having CFS (1% of the total school population). This is widely believed to be a conservative figure but has set alarm bells ringing nonetheless. The real beauty of this research is what this early detection system means for the outcome of these children.   

Unexplained absence may be a good early detection system

Of the children with unexplained absence those diagnosed through school surveillance had a lesser degree of symptoms, pain and fatigue than those who had sought medical assistance outside of the researchers school clinic. Furthermore, some children who were diagnosed through school surveillance improved within 6 weeks and some in 6 months once they had received diagnosis. This equated to more than half the children with unexplained absence were back at school full time within 6 months.   

Reduced school attendance is associated with worse educational attainment and may increase the risk of unemployment so it is in the interest of the long-term future of the child as well as the short-term improvements in their health to implement systems that can return unwell children to full time education.

by Sarah Gill BSc (Hons)

 

Reference: BMJ Open 2011;1:e000252 doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000252