Abstract
Effective pediatric asthma care is believed to help prevent the development and exacerbation of asthma. The aim of this study was to evaluate the method of intervention by identifying asthma management in a large population. We designed a special questionnaire to evaluate the method of asthma management, which contributes to asthma deterioration in the early stage of life. Questions regarding asthma management were based on care techniques and the medications used. We retrospectively enrolled 547 of 1,495 children (3-years old) who had for a periodic medical checkup organized by Gunma Prefecture from December 2004 to November 2005 who had been diagnosed to have asthma by physicians and/or the American Thoracic Society-Division of Lung Diseases, National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (ATS-DLD) questionnaire. The children with sufficiently improved asthma totalled 376 (68.7%), while 171 (31.3%) did not have sufficiently improved asthma. Children with asthma who were treated in hospitals improved more frequently than those treated on an outpatient basis (p = 0.006). Patients visiting the hospital tend to use an asthma diary more often, and were treated by specialists for asthma management (p < 0.001, p < 0.001, respectively). The treatment with long-term management (> 6 months treatment) over an asthma attack-free period was more prevalent in patients treated in hospitals (p < 0.001), however, there was no direct evidence that such long-term management results in significant improvement in patients with asthma. The treatment of pediatric asthma with a long-term management and with appropriate parental education in hospital was associated with sufficient improvement of asthma in 3 year-old subjects.
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