Chest
Clinical Investigations: AsthmaThe Effect of a Peak Flow-Based Action Plan in the Prevention of Exacerbations of Asthma
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
Adult and adolescent patients who had received urgent treatment for their asthma in the preceding 12 months were invited to participate in this study. Subjects were recruited by contacting those who had been treated for an exacerbation of asthma in an emergency department in one of the teaching hospitals in the city of Calgary. Subjects were also recruited from those attending a university asthma clinic when they gave a history of having received urgent treatment for their asthma in the
Results
One hundred fifty-one subjects, of whom all had required urgent treatment for their asthma within the previous 12 months, were enrolled in the study. One subject was withdrawn when her physician revised her diagnosis following a normal methacholine challenge. In total, the remaining 150 subjects had required urgent treatment for asthma on 482 occasions and had been admitted to a hospital for treatment of asthma 71 times in the year preceding their entry into the study. Fifty-two of the subjects
Discussion
The implementation of action plans based on symptom or peak flow monitoring has been widely advocated for the management of asthma. Such an intervention, if effective, would seem to be clearly justified in those asthmatics who have severe exacerbations that require urgent treatment. The need for urgent asthma treatment might identify a subset of asthmatics who may be at increased risk of dying of their disease.11, 12 It has been postulated that this group of asthmatic subjects might lack
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Supported by a grant from the Foothills Hospital, Calgary.