RESUMO
Bronchial asthma is a chronically disease with huge social economical consequences. Educational programs, which have been design for asthmatic patients and diminish asthma mobility and reduce medical cost. They also improve the patients quality of life. We show the results of our educational programs for asthmatic adults which were evaluated through a questionnaire applied to these patient one year after the program was introduced. The results show decreased of medicine required asthmatic crisis.
Assuntos
Asma/fisiopatologia , Educação de Pacientes como Assunto , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Asthma is a world health problem. Education of asthmatic patient has been proposed as a choice for diminishing mortality due to asthma. OBJECTIVE: To demonstrate that educational programs for asthmatic patients help to reduce disease's severity, crises and hospitalizations number and encourage a bigger therapeutic compliance. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 80 asthmatic patients were divided into two groups; first one received educational curse and second one does not. All patients received treatment according to international guides, including monthly consultation, flow-meter, and symptoms day book; an initial and final evaluation was made about disease's knowledge. Course consisted of a workshop including crisis management, use of inhaled medication, flow-metry and relaxation techniques. RESULTS: We studied 76 patients, with a mean age of 34 years; 36 were assigned to group 1 and 40 to group 2. Initial assessment of both groups was of 7.8, while final evaluation of groups 1 and 2 was of 9.3 and 8.4, respectively. Group 1 had lesser number of hospitalizations than group 2 (p-0.005), lesser number of emergency consultations (p-0.005) and a higher overall improvement than group 2, in which only 8 patients got well. A third part of the group 1 abandoned treatment, while patients that abandoned treatment in group 2 accounted for 79% (p < 0.0005). CONCLUSIONS: Educational programs for asthmatic adult patients diminish severity of disease, number of crises and hospitalizations, and also increase therapeutic compliance.