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Respiratory questionnaire responses: how they change with time
D Fishwick1, L Bradshaw, T Kemp
1Department of Medicine, Wellington School of Medicine, USA.
The New Zealand Medical Journal
|August 22, 1997
Summary
Many individuals previously identified with asthma symptoms do not report them four years later. This suggests the actual number of people susceptible to asthma is much higher than surveys indicate.
Area of Science:
- Respiratory Medicine
- Epidemiology
Background:
- Respiratory questionnaires are vital for identifying asthma symptoms.
- Previous studies have focused on current symptom prevalence, potentially underestimating the true burden of asthma.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the stability of self-reported asthma symptoms and medication use over a four-year period in adult New Zealanders.
- To assess the implications of symptom reporting variability for epidemiological studies and public health planning.
Main Methods:
- A cohort of 723 adults with previously identified asthma symptoms in New Zealand completed two similar questionnaires approximately four years apart.
- Participants had all answered "yes" to at least one of three key asthma-related questions in the initial survey.
Main Results:
- After four years, only 67.4% of the cohort reported at least one asthma symptom.
- Reported nocturnal shortness of breath decreased from the first to the second survey (51.1%), as did asthma attacks (69.9%) and medication use (74.8%).
Conclusions:
- A significant proportion of individuals previously identified as symptomatic asthmatics no longer report symptoms or medication use four years later.
- This variability indicates that the true prevalence of asthma susceptibility may be substantially underestimated by 12-month period prevalence surveys.
- Findings have critical implications for designing epidemiological studies, selecting control groups, and planning asthma-related health services and educational programs.