NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children with asthma are not likely to be diagnosed accurately and, as a result, may miss out on treatments to help control the condition, according to a new study.

Asthma is the most common chronic illness among children in the US, affecting as many as 8.6 million people under the age of 18, according to the American Lung Association.

Government health experts recommend that children with mild to severe persistent asthma use maintenance medications daily to control their illness. But one recent study found 74% of US children with asthma were receiving inadequate maintenance therapy, Dr. Jill S. Halterman of the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York and colleagues note in the February issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

To investigate, Halterman's team interviewed 90 children aged 4 to 6 with mild to severe chronic asthma, as defined by their parents. The researchers also interviewed the children's parents and their primary care physician.

Only 40% of the children were described accurately by their healthcare provider as having mild persistent to severe persistent asthma, and just half had been prescribed maintenance medications, the report indicates.

But among the children whose doctors had described their condition accurately, 83% were prescribed appropriate daily maintenance medications and 58% reportedly used the medications every day.

The findings suggest that there may be a breakdown in communication between healthcare providers and parents of children with asthma, according to the authors.

"The reasons for this communication gap between providers and families are not clear," Halterman and colleagues write. "Prior work from our group has suggested that families may not make contacts with healthcare providers to notify them of symptoms even when these symptoms are occurring daily."

What's more, the researchers point out that some parents may interpret a certain number of symptoms as normal and may not realize that preventive medications are available.

Any attempts to improve adherence to asthma treatment guidelines, they conclude, should take into account doctors' potential underestimation of asthma severity.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 2002;156:141-146.

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