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Adult asthma in Qatar poorly controlled despite high GDP
Adults with asthma residing in Qatar had suboptimal control and care of the disease, despite the country having the world’s highest gross domestic product per capita and a high per capita health expenditure, a recent study determined.
Wanis H. Ibrahim, MD, FRCP, FCCP, senior consultant physician, Hamad General Hospital, and assistant professor of medicine, Weill-Cornell Medical College, Doha, Qatar, and colleagues conducted interviews in a cross-sectional study of 520 adults with physician-diagnosed asthma (58% men) from May 2011 to March 2014. Thirty-three percent of patients had uncontrolled asthma; 41%, controlled asthma; and 26%, partly controlled asthma, based on Global Initiative for Asthma criteria. The most commonly associated allergic disease was allergic rhinitis (49.2% of participants).
Wanis H. Ibrahim
“Only 4.9% of patients had previously received a written asthma management plan, 3.5% had a flow meter at home, and 37.2% had a spirometry performed in the previous 5 years,” the researchers wrote.
There were 42.9% of participants who did not know the difference between reliever and controller medications, and 47% of those participants did not know proper inhaler technique. Type of physician practice and asthma control level were associated (P<.001), with uncontrolled asthma occurring most commonly with general practitioners (49.4%). There were 57.3% of participants who reported at least one visit to the ED for asthma in the previous year and 18.7% cited more than three ED visits in a year.
“The … study showed that the very high GDP per capita does not seem to have led to better asthma care compared with other affluent countries,” the researchers wrote. “Asthma control in this rich country is far from being achieved, which has resulted in substantial use of health care resources by patients with asthma.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.