Pharmacist Advice Improves Asthma Control

Main Category: Respiratory / Asthma
Also Included In: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 25 Mar 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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In the PHARMACI study (Pharmaceutical Care for Asthma Control Improvement), Els Mehuys (Ghent University, Belgium) and colleagues evaluated the impact of pharmacist advice on symptom control of adult asthma patients.

This study, which was a randomised controlled trial conducted on 201 patients, shows significant improvements in the therapeutic outcomes of patients receiving pharmacist advice. As a result, the PHARMACI study will have far-reaching consequences in the management of asthma over the coming years.

By implementing the Asthma Control Test® (ACT) in community pharmacies as a monitoring tool of asthma control, the pharmacist will be able to check the level of asthma control in individual asthma patients presenting to the pharmacy with a prescription for anti-asthma medication.

If the ACT score is between 20 and 25, meaning well-controlled asthma, the current treatment should be continued. However, if the ACT score is between 15 and 20, indicating partly controlled asthma, the pharmacist has to check and improve the patient's inhalation technique and medication adherence, in order to improve asthma management.

Finally, if the ACT score is below 15, indicating uncontrolled asthma, the pharmacist will - in addition to the patient education regarding inhalation technique and adherence with maintenance treatment - advise the patient to visit his/her general practitioner or respiratory physician. The physician will then promptly and thoroughly evaluate the patient, searching for the aetiology of the loss of asthma control, and augment the anti-inflammatory maintenance treatment, if required.

This strategy, tailor-made to the patient's current level of asthma control, will result in improved asthma control, which is the ultimate goal of the management of asthma, as defined by the updated Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) Guidelines 2006.

Effectiveness of pharmacist intervention for asthma control improvement

The European Respiratory Journal is the peer-reviewed scientific publication of the European Respiratory Society (more than 8,000 specialists in lung diseases and respiratory medicine in Europe, the United States and Australia).

http://erj.ersjournals.com