title: Impact of changes in asthma severity on health-related quality of life in pediatric and adult asthma patients: results from the asthma outcomes monitoring system.
abstract: The goals of asthma treatment have broadened beyond managing traditional clinical markers of disease severity, and now include a focus on benefits of treatment in terms that are most meaningful to patients. Measurement of both generic and disease-specific health-related quality of life (HQL) is advocated because each provides complementary information about how the condition affects everyday functioning and well-being and whether treatments have their intended effects. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of changes in asthma severity (defined using NHLBI/NAEPP severity staging) on patient-assessed HQL. Two hundred and thirty-three pediatric asthma patients and 269 adult asthma patients were evaluated in a one-year observational study. Analyses were performed to compare the generic and asthma-specific scores for patients whose asthma severity improved, stayed the same, or worsened over one year. The asthma-specific scales are sensitive to changes in disease severity. Of the generic scales, those tapping areas of physical health are more affected than the mental/emotional scales. This confirms that HQL measures are responsive to changes in asthma severity. They complement traditional clinical markers used to evaluate changes in a patient's disease state and thus give the physician another useful tool in following the clinical progress of the child with asthma.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and Medicine, University of Tennessee, Memphis, USA.
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Graham
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Blaiss
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Bayliss
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Espindle
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Ware
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001249:Asthma / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011788:Quality of Life; D012720:Severity of Illness Index