The importance of asthma education in patients with asthma

Year 1995, Volume: 8 Issue: 4, 171 - 174, 01.10.1995

T. Karagöz E. Akkaya A. Yılmaz H. Türker Z. Kılıç T. Şadoğlu

Abstract

Despite recent developments about the diagnosis and treatment of asthma, the increasing trend in morbidity and mortality puts weight on providing the patients with the essential information. This study was carried out among two groups of patients; Group I included 22 patients who had been receiving treatment at our Allergy and Asthma Center, Group II involved 21 patients who applied for the first time. All the patients [16 male, 27 female, mean age 28 (10- 49)] were randomly selected.

The study was performed in two stages which were pre-training and post-training. Patients were asked to fill a questionnaire followed by a brief explanation of performing proper MDI technique. In the second stage all the participants were given an educational programon asthma. Our success rate in performing the correct MDI technique was 37% (16/43) before education; and 72% (31/43) after education. The consistency between the observer and the monitor, when the correct and incorrect techniques were evaluated altogether, was found as 88.4% (38/437.

In conclusion, this study helped to reveal that patients with bronchial asthma do not have sufficient information about the disease and the drugs they are administered, that training have a corrective role in the MDI use, and in the absenve of manitoring devices, an observer near a MDI using patient may draw correct scores as to the performance.

Keywords

Asthma, education, MDI techniques, monitoring

References

• Scadding JO. Definition of asthma In: Weiss EB, Stein M, eds. Bronchial asthma. Boston: Little Brown Compy, 1993: 749-755.