Researchers report that patients with asthma can achieve near-normal quality of life if they aim for total control of their symptoms.
Such control can be achieved by escalating individualised treatment in line with current guidelines through combination treatments and increasing treatment dosage, the investigators say.
“Guidelines for the management of asthma? state that the therapeutic aim should be to achieve overall asthma control in order to minimise the impact of asthma on the individual patient,” note Dr E Bateman (University of Cape Town, South Africa) and colleagues.
The researchers surveyed 1994 asthma patients, of whom approximately half received treatment with fluticasone propionate alone while the remainder received fluticasone propionate plus salmeterol.
Both types of treatment led to significant improvements in symptoms, but more of the patients receiving combined treatment were considered to have total control or well-controlled asthma than those receiving fluticasone alone.
The researchers note in the European Respiratory Journal that quality of life in areas such as symptoms and activity limitation was significantly better among patients with total control and well-controlled asthma than among those whose symptoms were not well controlled.
They add that significant differences in quality of life were even seen between patients with total control of their symptoms and those with well-controlled symptoms. The high levels of asthma control were maintained throughout the study and the majority of those with total control scored normal or near-normal values for health status.
“The clinical implications of these findings are that when treatment is individualised and directed towards achieving total control, it offers the vast majority of asthma patients (regardless of the severity of asthma) the prospect of achieving quality-of-life scores approaching the maximum, ie, with little or no impact of asthma on patients’ daily lives,” Dr Bateman and co-workers write.