Reddel HK, et al. - This study assessed reliever-only users to determine the urgent health care utilization, their attitudes, and beliefs about asthma and its treatment. It was also assessed if purchasing over-the-counter relievers was associated with worse asthma outcomes than by prescription. Findings reported that urgent asthma healthcare was required in one-quarter of the reliever-only population in the previous year, this showed the significance of detecting such patients. In addition, their attitudes and beliefs were indicative of opportunities for targeting this population in the community.

Methods

• Researchers performed a cross-sectional population-based Internet survey in Australia.
• Participants included 2686 subjects ≥16 years with current asthma, randomly drawn from a web-based panel and out of those 1038 (50.7% male) used only reliever medication.
• Urgent asthma-related healthcare; Asthma Control Test (ACT); patient attitudes about asthma and medications; reliever purchase (with/without prescription) were the main outcome measures.

Results

• Data reported that of 1038 reliever-only participants, 23.3% had required urgent healthcare for asthma in the previous year, and only 36.0% had a non-urgent asthma review.
• Researchers also observed that those needing urgent healthcare were more likely than those without such events to be male (56.5% vs 49.0%, p=0.003) and current smokers (29.4% vs 23.3%, p=0.009).
• It was noted that compared with 71.0% of those with no urgent healthcare (p<0.0001), only 30.6% had well-controlled asthma (ACT ≥20) and a regular use of relievers was reported in 20.8% in order to prevent asthma symptoms (vs 5.5% of those without urgent healthcare).
• Researchers found that frustration associated with asthma was more in those with urgent healthcare and these individuals were less happy with how they managed it, and they were less confident about their ability to manage worsening asthma, but just as likely as those without urgent healthcare to manage worsening asthma themselves rather than visit a doctor.
• The likelihood of having uncontrolled asthma was not more in reliever-only users purchasing over-the-counter relievers, compared with those purchasing relievers by prescription (35.9% vs 40.6%, p=0.23) but the former subjects were less likely to have had a non-urgent asthma review.