[Involving pharmacists in the management of asthma patients]

Several national and international studies on the care of asthma patients delivered by community pharmacists have shown that pharmacist interventions help to improve patient parameters like, for example, the patient's quality of life, self-management skills, compliance and optimization of drug therapy. These results have led to pharmacists' involvement in national asthma guidelines, e.g., in the UK and the United States. Pharmacists have now also been involved in the revised version of the German national guidelines on asthma. In this paper we will present the existing evidence in Germany on how pharmacists add value to the care of asthma patients. Furthermore, the involvement of pharmacists in the German National Disease Management Guideline for Asthma will be discussed.