Allergy Asthma Respir Dis.  2016 Sep;4(5):340-345. 10.4168/aard.2016.4.5.340.

Clinical outcomes after recovery from severe asthma exacerbation: the third report

• Choi IS
• Eun JN
• Hong JY
• Park MS

• KMID: 2391923
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4168/aard.2016.4.5.340

Abstract

PURPOSE
Up to 10% of the mortality rate of asthmatics within a year from the near-fatal attacks has been reported. We previously reported that not a few patients with acute severe asthma died after discharge from the hospital. This study investigated whether our efforts to improve clinical outcomes of patients after recovery from severe asthma exacerbation did work or not.
METHODS
Follow-up data from asthmatic patients who had been hospitalized due to severe exacerbation between 2007 and 2014 (present) were compared with that the previous one (1998-2006) (previous).
RESULTS
Sex, age, near-fatal asthma, and mortality (9.8% vs. 9.6%) were not significantly different between the previous (n=225) and present (n=397) studies. However, rehospitalization rate was significantly lower in the present study (29.3% vs. 52.4%, P=0.000). The patients in the present study used inhaled steroid more frequently (78.5% vs. 68.0%, P=0.006), had better asthma knowledge (P=0.000), and higher proportion of regular hospital visitors to total subjects (75.6% vs. 64.9%, P=0.004) than did the previous patients. The regular hospital visitors (n=300) showed a significantly lower mortality (3.3% vs. 28.9%, P=0.000), better knowledge (P=0.000) and higher inhaled steroid use (85.8% vs. 54.1%, P=0.000) than did the other group (n=97) in the present study.
CONCLUSION
Clinical outcomes after recovery from severe asthma exacerbation in the present study were better than the previous one. Our efforts to educate patients might contribute to these better results.

Keyword

Asthma; Exacerbation; Mortality; Outcome

MeSH Terms

Asthma*
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
Mortality

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Posthospitalization mortality rates in patients with acute severe asthma who did or did not visit regularly an outpatient department (OPD) during follow-up.

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