Experts Urge Asthma Patients to ‘Manage’ Their Health Care

Asthma patients should take more control in treating their lung disease, guidelines issued Monday by experts representing 35 professional health care organizations advise.

Among the recommendations: no cats or dogs in the house and no over-the-counter drugs.

“Medicine is a partnership now,” said Dr. Shirley Murphy, a professor at the University of New Mexico school of medicine and chairman of the experts’ panel. “Patients need to take a greater responsibility for managing their chronic disease.”

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that can severely affect ability to breathe. The incidence of the disease among Americans has increased from fewer than 7 million cases in 1980 to more than 14 million in 1994. The disease causes thousands of hospitalizations annually.

The guidelines call for patients to work with their doctors to develop specific personal plans for controlling the disorder.

Murphy said personal plans would include daily medicines and instructions for handling an asthma crisis.

Some patients should include daily lung-capacity tests and specific directions on what medications to use to “rescue” themselves in a breathing crisis, she said.

Also recommended are methods to diagnose and start treatment of asthma at an early age. Murphy said early control of inflammation helps to preserve lung function later in life.

Murphy said patients should stop using over-the-counter products in favor of more-effective prescription inhalants.

She also said patients should undergo skin tests to identify allergy-causing substances in the home that then must be removed or controlled.

The guidelines update ones issued in 1991 by the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program.