27 Sep Do you have Asthma… Are you sure?
Asthma is a common respiratory condition, which is actually an inflammatory disorder of the lungs. For some people it can occur sporadically i.e. during exercise, but for others it is a chronic condition that effects their day to day life. Asthma can and is often treated with inhalers, and while there is no cure, often these treatments can reduce the symptoms of asthma to a level that does not seemingly effect a person’s day to day life. However, what if you don’t have asthma but you were told that you do? Every day you would be using medication that you don’t need. Conversely what if you were told you don’t have asthma, but you actually did? Proper diagnostic testing is plays such an important role in the diagnosis and management of Asthma.
Aaron et al. looked at 613 randomly chosen asthma patients in Canada, and sought to find out if these patients truly had Asthma or not. What they found was that 33% of patients no longer showed signs of the condition. These patients were taken off their medication (under supervision as a part of the study) and the researchers found that 27% of these patients actually had nothing wrong with them at all. What was also worrying is that the researchers did some digging into the medical history of these patients and found that the bare minimum testing required for asthma diagnosis (spirometry) was not performed. If the right tests are not done, it’s not a big step to think that the wrong diagnoses can happen. Now if this many people are given an incorrect positive diagnosis i.e. they are told they have asthma (called a false positive), how many people are walking around with asthma who have been told they don’t have it (called a false negative). Take home message: without the proper testing, it is easy to end up with the wrong diagnosis.
Here at TSGQ we take respiratory diagnostics very seriously, in fact spirometry is only one of many respiratory tests we routinely perform. Not only do we perform spirometry very well, we actually give training session to doctors and nurses to also help them better perform this test. Keep in mind that spirometry is only one test, there are also more bulk billed respiratory tests we can perform, along with spirometry to give really high quality results. We call these tests when combined; a complex lung function test. The reason we do these other tests (FeNO, gas exchance etc) is to give a much more high quality service to our patients. However we must say that if you have any questions about Asthma, or your health to please contact your doctor and speak to them.
Original article: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2598265