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Telephone calls prompted patients with asthma to follow environmental control suggestions
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Patients with persistent asthma and known triggers agreed to and instituted indoor allergen-specific recommendations when contacted by telephone, particularly patients who owned their homes as opposed to renting, according to recent study results.
In the phase 2 study, researchers followed patients with uncontrolled asthma who were contacted by telephone and asked what indoor environmental changes they would agree to make (stage I) and then what changes they made (stage II). Using a 1- to 5-point Likert scale, the patients — all Southern California Kaiser Permanente health plan members — were asked to rate what changes they were willing to institute inside their homes. A rating of 1 indicated “not willing at all to make a change,” and 5 indicated “very willing and very likely to make a change.” On items that were scored ≥3, the researchers called back the stage II patients after two months to see if they had made the changes that they had agreed to follow.
The stage I patients (n=60) agreed to institute 14 of the 18 proposed allergen-specific changes. In the stage II group (n=36) that was allergic to mites, mold and/or dander, 80.6% told researchers they complied with at least one of the recommendations made during the earlier telephone calls. By comparison, in the researchers’ phase 1 study, only 23.8% of 72 patients reported making any suggested environmental changes after receiving a menu of recommendations via mail.
Researchers found that 67.7% of the stage II patients said they were homeowners. They were significantly (P<.05) more likely (91.3%) to make at least one recommended change than patients who rented their homes (63.6%).
“ … we suggest that environmental control recommendations for mite, mold, and dander emphasize this set of recommendations because they appear to be practical for most or a substantial proportion of patients,” researchers said.