title: [Convenience and utility of the easy asthma program questionnaire for long-term management of bronchial asthma].
abstract: The Asthma Prevention and Management Guidelines suggest that physicians should monitor peak expiratory flow (PEF) for long-term management of bronchial asthma. However, PEF monitoring is not widespread throughout Japan, except for specialists in respirology and allergology clinics. In 2002, a convenient new questionnaire, the Easy Asthma Program (EAP), was developed to allow precise management of asthma patients even outside specialized institutions. We examined whether this questionnaire was useful for the evaluation of the severity and management of asthmatic patients. The EAP questionnaire consists of four questions about asthmatic events during the interval between visits to the hospital. Before the medical interview, we distributed the EAP questionnaire to patients to complete by themselves. We received 595 effective answers from 105 asthmatic patients and assessed the disease severity based on the EAP questionnaire, which we called the EAP step. The result of the EAP step correlated strongly with the severity of asthma, as determined by doctors following physical examinations (p<0.0001, r= 0.7). Our study also revealed that the EAP step tended to correlate negatively with the predicted PEF values. Thus, the accurate evaluation of the disease severity of asthma based on the Asthma Prevention and Management Guidelines could be provided by the EAP questionnaire, which could be performed in only a few minutes. The EAP questionnaire could be a useful tool for the management of asthma by non-specialists especially in primary care facilities.
authors.affiliation: Medical Center for Allergic and Immune Diseases, Yokohama City Minato Red Cross Hospital.
authors.forename: Shintaro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suzukil
authors.forename: Yoichi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: Mitsuru
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Adachil
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001249:Asthma / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000592:standards*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires