Asthma Insight & Management
AIM for a Better Understanding of Patient and Doctor Views About Asthma
The AIM survey was designed to reveal the state of asthma care today and compare it to a similar survey, Asthma In America (AIA), conducted in 1998. With these two comparable bookends, we should be able to understand how asthma care has changed over the past decade.
The results reveal limited progress has been made in certain measures of asthma care over the past decade.
- While emergency room visits due to asthma are down incrementally, there have been no improvements in overnight hospitalizations
and other unscheduled emergency visits due to asthma over the past decade - 22 percent of adults (16 and older) with asthma
surveyed as part of AIM reported that their health keeps them from going to school or working, compared with 25 percent of adults (16 and older) with asthma surveyed in 1998 as part of AIA. - 14 percent of adults (16 and older) with asthma surveyed as part of AIM report their activities are limited in any way by their health, compared to 17 percent reported in the 1998 survey.
The high rate of acute care for asthma reported by asthma patients 12 and older in the AIM survey is an especially powerful indication that more progress is needed. In the past year,
- 6 percent
of respondents were hospitalized overnight due to asthma - 16 percent of respondents went to the emergency room due to asthma
- 26 percent had to make other unscheduled emergency visits due to asthma
Over their lifetimes,
- One in 10
asthma patients surveyed had an asthma episode so bad they were put in the intensive care unit - 21 percent surveyed had an asthma episode so bad they have been intubated or placed on a breathing machine
- 8 percent surveyed had an asthma episode so bad they have lost consciousness
Tools to Fight Asthma
AIM findings show that many patients lack an accurate understanding of well controlled asthma compared to the classification of control used in the survey that was based on the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) guidelines. Approximately 70 percent of patients
surveyed reported their asthma was either completely controlled or well controlled, despite nearly half of these patients (47 percent) being classified as having very poorly controlled asthma based on the survey’s classification criteria.
The way patients use their asthma medications may provide insights on the lack of control among many. According to the AIM survey,
- 16 percent
of asthma patients surveyed used their quick-relief inhaler every day in the past year - 7 percent used it three to six times a week in the past year
- 10 percent used it one to two times a week in the past year
- Only 46 percent reported using a long-term maintenance medication in the past four weeks
When prescribed, doctors recommend that asthma patients use their long-term maintenance medicines daily, and quick-relief inhalers when needed for sudden asthma symptoms. With regular use, long-term maintenance medications treat the underlying inflammation of the airways to help prevent asthma symptoms before they start. However, of all the adult and adolescent patients who reported using prescription medicine for long-term maintenance of their asthma, a very large segment (42 percent)
reported that they had stopped taking their asthma maintenance medication for a week or longer in the past year.
