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Written
Management Plans
Help Cut Asthma Deaths
NEW YORK (Reuters
Health) - The way a patient manages their asthma can dramatically
influence whether they survive a major attack, researchers report.
Written asthma
care plans and use of oral steroid drugs could significantly reduce
the death rates from asthma by helping asthmatics rely less on
their inhalers, study findings suggest.
Doctors have
debated whether asthma medications and management plans have any
impact on death rates from the disease.
So Dr. Michael
J. Abramson and colleagues from Monash University in Melbourne,
Australia, carefully explored various factors that might distinguish
51 asthma patients who died after an attack from 202 asthmatics
who were hospitalized but survived their asthma attacks.
The two groups
of patients differed markedly in their asthma management. Survivors
were more than three times as likely as those who died to have
used a written asthma action plan to manage their asthma, according
to the report in January's American Journal of Respiratory and
Critical Care Medicine. In fact, the use of such a plan reduced
the death rate by just over 70%.
The people
who died as a result of the attack were also less likely to have
been using peak flow meters to monitor their asthma, Abramson's
team notes.
People who
used oral steroid drugs to treat an attack were 90% less likely
to die from the attack, the report indicates. But high blood levels
of salbutamol--one of many commonly used asthma drugs called beta-agonists--were
more than twice as high in dying patients as in surviving patients.
``More widespread
adoption of written asthma management plans, with less reliance
on beta-agonists and closer medical supervision, should reduce
asthma (death rates),'' the authors conclude.
The researchers
also urge patients ``not to self-administer escalating doses of
beta-agonists during acute severe asthma attacks without first
seeking assistance.''
SOURCE:
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
Reference
Source 89
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