Superior clinical outcomes of inner city asthma patients treated in an allergy clinic.
BACKGROUND
Asthma morbidity and mortality continue to increase especially in the inner cities despite medical advances in disease management.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the clinical outcomes of inner city asthma patients treated in an allergy clinic.


METHODS
Phase 1 involved random review of medical records of 100 asthma patients treated in an allergy clinic for 2 consecutive years, assessing the frequency of hospitalizations, emergency room visits (ERV) and asthma severity during three periods; 1 year prior to initial visit (year 0) and during the first (year 1) and second (year 2) years of intervention. Phase 2 involved administration of quality of life (QOL) survey to 23 patients volunteered from allergy clinic (group I), and 21 patients volunteered from emergency room (group II), treated by primary care or emergency room physicians during the previous year.


RESULTS
The frequency of hospitalizations and ERV significantly declined over time (P < .001) with greatest declines during year 1. Disease severity of all patients significantly declined over time (P < .001); good compliers had significant improvement over poor compliers (P < .023). Quality of life scores were significantly lower for both groups than for the general population; and although the scores were higher in the allergy clinic group than in the non-allergy clinic group, significant differences were achieved only in mental health and social functioning domains.


CONCLUSIONS
Patients treated in an allergy clinic demonstrate superior clinical outcomes.
Vilar
M E
ME
Department of Allergy and Immunology, Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, New York 11201, USA.
Reddy
B M
BM
Silverman
B A
BA
Bassett
C W
CW
Rao
Y A
YA
Chiaramonte
L T
LT
Schneider
A T
AT
D000328:Adult; D001249:Asthma / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000628:therapy*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006306:Health Surveys; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D009518:New York / Q000453:epidemiology; D010349:Patient Compliance; D011788:Quality of Life; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D019037:Urban Health Services