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Primary Care Respiratory Journal: Journal of the General Practice Airways Group logoLink to Primary Care Respiratory Journal: Journal of the General Practice Airways Group
. 2010 Sep 9;19(4):383–389. doi: 10.4104/pcrj.2010.00046

Asthma severity in primary care asthma patients: a comparative study of four different approaches to severity classification

Marianne Heibert Arnlind 1,4,5, Mika Nokela 1,2,5, Per-Olof Ehrs 1,3, Eva Wikström Jonsson 1,2,*
PMCID: PMC6602259  PMID: 20842326

Abstract

Aims:

To explore the factor structure of asthma severity and asthma control and to compare the results of different approaches to asthma severity classification on the distribution of costs of asthma medication.

Methods:

Comparison of four different approaches to asthma severity classification and factor analysis of asthma control descriptors. A correlation analysis between costs and the different approaches to severity classification was performed.

Results:

The factor analysis suggests that asthma control consists of at least two factors. Four approaches to severity classification were explored and all except the ‘GINA EXPANDED’ classification tended to place patients in the most severe category. The pharmaceutical costs varied between 0 and 75 SEK per day (0 and 5.31 GBP; 0 and 7.68 EURO ).

Conclusions:

There is a considerable overlap between asthma control and asthma severity. None of the approaches used in this study present a superior satisfactory solution to the classification problem.

Keywords: Asthma severity, classification, costs, asthma control

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Footnotes

No financial or other potential conflicts of interest related to the subject of the manuscript exist for any of the authors.


Articles from Primary Care Respiratory Journal: Journal of the General Practice Airways Group are provided here courtesy of Primary Care Respiratory Society UK/Macmillan Publishers Limited

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