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New Research - January 2010
Does home-based asthma adherence feedback improve outcomes?
Summary
Investigators in this trial assessed the longitudinal effects of three different asthma intervention strategies. These were:
- Home-based asthma education combined with medication adherence feedback (AMF)
- Asthma education alone (ABC)
- Usual care control group (UC)
They evaluated 250 inner-city children with asthma, mean age 7 years. Sixty-two percent male; 98% African-American. Health outcome measures included:
- Oral corticosteroid use at baseline 6, 12, and 18 months
- Adherence measures related to the use of inhaled corticosteroid therapy
- Frequency of asthma symptoms
- Emergency department visits
- Hospitalizations
The results were:
- Emergency department visits decreased more rapidly for the AMF group than for the UC group, but no total differences were noted between these groups
- Although a brief improvement in adherence to corticosteroid therapy occurred, the improvement did not persist over time
- Symptoms and courses of corticosteroids decreased more rapidly for the ABC group than for the UC group
- Hospitalization rates did not differ between any group
The authors conclusions were that asthma education may lead to improved adherence and decreased morbidity compared with UC. Home-based educational interventions may lead to modest short-term improvement in asthma outcomes among inner-city children. Adherence feedback did not improve outcomes over education alone.
Reference
Otsuki M, et al. Adherence feedback to improve asthma outcomes among inner-city children: a randomized trial. Pediatrics 2009; 124(6):1513-1521.
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