Common lung conditions: asthma

Asthma is a common respiratory disease that leads to school and work absenteeism, office and emergency department visits, hospitalization, and mortality. Dyspnea and wheezing are caused by airway inflammation. Asthma severity scores are used to predict the risk of exacerbations. Severity assessment instruments include questions about daytime and nighttime symptoms, use of short-acting beta2-agonists, and the effect of symptoms on daily activities. The 4 components of effective asthma management are monitoring, education, control of environmental factors, and pharmacotherapy. Several national quality measures are used to measure asthma care. The National Healthcare Quality & Disparities reports measure use of drugs, routine examinations, smoking cessation, influenza vaccination, emergency department visits, and urgent ambulatory visits. Electronic health records can be used to create asthma registries to identify patients who are at higher risk of exacerbations. Interventions that have been shown to improve asthma outcomes include asthma self-management and education, risk stratification of asthma patients, and improvement of drug adherence. Providing asthma education for patients and family members has been shown to decrease hospitalizations and emergency department visits.