Open Access, Peer-reviewed
pISSN 2288-0402
eISSN 2288-0410
    Allergy Asthma Respir Dis. 2016 Sep;4(5):340-345. Korean.
    Published online Sep 30, 2016.
    https://doi.org/10.4168/aard.2016.4.5.340
    © 2016 The Korean Academy of Pediatric Allergy and Respiratory Disease; The Korean Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Clinical Immunology
    Original Article

    Clinical outcomes after recovery from severe asthma exacerbation: the third report

    Inseon S. Choi,1,2 Jeong-Nam Eun,2 Ji-Yun Hong,2 and Myeong-Soo Park2
      • 1Department of Allergy, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea.
      • 2Department of Internal Medicine, Chonnam National University Hospital, Gwangju, Korea.
    • Correspondence to: Inseon S. Choi. Department of Internal Medicine, Chonnam National University Hospital, 42 Jebong-ro, Dong-gu, Gwangju 61469, Korea. Tel: +82-62-220-6571, Fax: +82-62-225-8578, Email: ischoi@chonnam.ac.kr
    Received June 10, 2016; Revised August 08, 2016; Accepted August 08, 2016.

    This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

    Abstract

    Purpose

    Up to 10% of the mortality rate of asthmatics within a year from the near-fatal attacks has been reported. We previously reported that not a few patients with acute severe asthma died after discharge from the hospital. This study investigated whether our efforts to improve clinical outcomes of patients after recovery from severe asthma exacerbation did work or not.

    Methods

    Follow-up data from asthmatic patients who had been hospitalized due to severe exacerbation between 2007 and 2014 (present) were compared with that the previous one (1998–2006) (previous).

    Results

    Sex, age, near-fatal asthma, and mortality (9.8% vs. 9.6%) were not significantly different between the previous (n=225) and present (n=397) studies. However, rehospitalization rate was significantly lower in the present study (29.3% vs. 52.4%, P=0.000). The patients in the present study used inhaled steroid more frequently (78.5% vs. 68.0%, P=0.006), had better asthma knowledge (P=0.000), and higher proportion of regular hospital visitors to total subjects (75.6% vs. 64.9%, P=0.004) than did the previous patients. The regular hospital visitors (n=300) showed a significantly lower mortality (3.3% vs. 28.9%, P=0.000), better knowledge (P=0.000) and higher inhaled steroid use (85.8% vs. 54.1%, P=0.000) than did the other group (n=97) in the present study.

    Conclusion

    Clinical outcomes after recovery from severe asthma exacerbation in the present study were better than the previous one. Our efforts to educate patients might contribute to these better results.

    Keywords
    Asthma; Exacerbation; Mortality; Outcome

    Figures

    Fig. 1
    Posthospitalization mortality rates in patients with acute severe asthma who did or did not visit regularly an outpatient department (OPD) during follow-up.

    Tables

    Table 1
    Clinical characteristics of patients recovered from acute severe asthma.

    Table 2
    Comparisons between regular and nonregular out-patient department visitors

    Table 3
    Comparisons between male and female patients in the present study

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    MeSH Terms
    Asthma*
    Follow-Up Studies
    Humans
    Mortality
    Metrics
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