Asthma inhaler (Image by NIAID via Flickr)
Asthma is often diagnosed purely on the patient’s self-reported symptoms and the physician’s observations, a recent study found. But 33% of adults recently diagnosed with the respiratory disease didn’t actually have active asthma, and over 90% of these patients were able to stop taking medication and remain safely off it for a year. The study looked at 613 randomly selected patients from 10 Canadian cities diagnosed with asthma in the last five years. Doctors found that many patients who’ve been misdiagnosed with asthma had much milder conditions, and 28% of those selected were completely healthy. In light of these results, study authors call for physicians to be more thorough with their diagnoses, and administer the spirometry test if asthma is suspected.
Authors:
Shawn D. Aaron, Katherine L. Vandemheen, J. Mark FitzGerald, Martha Ainslie, Samir Gupta, Catherine Lemière, Stephen K. Field, R. Andrew McIvor, Paul Hernandez, Irvin Mayers, Sunita Mulpuru, Gonzalo G. Alvarez, Smita Pakhale, Ranjeeta Mallick, Louis-Philippe Boulet for the Canadian Respiratory Research Network
Corresponding author:
Shawn Aaron, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, ON, Email: saaron@ohri.ca
Original paper published in JAMA on January 17, 2017.
Associated news release from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.
