Asthma care by a specialist helps control the disease

A French study presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) in Copenhagen shows that the management of asthma by a physician helps control symptoms.

Laurent Laforest and colleagues Civil Hospitals of Lyon (HCL) and Claude Bernard University of Lyon have come to this conclusion after a study conducted to determine the factors associated with asthma control.

To do this, they recruited 1282 consecutive patients who regularly travel 348 pharmacies to get their anti-asthma treatment. The assessment of the level of asthma control different participants allowed the authors found that only 28.2% of patients control their asthma symptoms well.

Support by a specialist appears to improve asthma control, since it is achieved for 51.7% of patients in this situation, against only 27.6% of patients treated only by a general practitioner.

However, the authors found that poor asthma control is particularly prevalent among patients followed by both a generalist and a specialist (78.5%).

Analysis of prescribed treatments indicates that the rate of well-controlled patients shows maximum in those receiving a combination of inhaled corticosteroid and bronchodilator beta-2 (30.6%). The proportion of asthma control well their disease appears lower in those receiving only corticosteroids (25.7%) and those treated only with beta-2 agonists (24.9%).

For treatment, it was found that patients treated in a specialist were more likely to prescribe fixed combinations of inhaled corticosteroid and bronchodilator beta 2.

Moreover, the French researchers found that female sex, smoking and body mass index (BMI, weight on the square of height) represent many major independent risk factors for poor control of the disease.

These results suggest that it is necessary to strengthen the one hand, patient education and, secondly, the coordination of care between specialist and generalist to improve the control of asthma, the authors conclude