Abstract
The obligatory diagnostic criteria for occupational asthma are: the patient's history including the working history, the clinical symptoms and the positive result(s) of a specific bronchial challenge test(s) performed with the suspected working material(s). Monitoring the peak expiratory flow rate at home and at work, skin tests (prick test) and the airway's hyperresponsiveness determined by histamine or methacholine challenge constitute useful complementary data. Occupational asthma in Hungary is a registered but not a compensated disease, and, consequently, the number of the registered cases does not reflect the true incidence and prevalence of the disease. These are both underesti mated and the data for them from Hungary are not comparable with those from other countries.
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