In clinical practice To control symptoms in patients with moderate to severe asthma, 7 out of 10 doctors prefer a proactive approach to regular dosing (Prd). Many patients on Mart therapy (Maintenance and reliever therapy) require additional emergency medicationswhich suggests that this approach is not applied correctly in most cases and that patients may also perceive their asthma as insufficiently controlled. Taken together, these are the results of an online survey that collected the habits and experiences of physicians and patients in prescribing asthma, recently published in Respiratory Medicine and supported by GSK. Work – VIEW-2 Asthma Patients and Physician Perspectives on Asthma Stress and Treatment – Included 1,650 asthmatics and 1,080 doctors (28% of which pulmonologists) and were carried out in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, France and Italy.
For a patient with moderate to severe asthma, explains Gsk in the note, 71% of clinicians prefer to start with therapeutic regimen based on the combination of Ics / Laba with or without the use of Saba (short-acting beta-agonists) as needed, i.e. proactive therapy at regular doses. Among pulmonologists, this choice is even more important: it is the intervention of choice for 75% of the surveyed specialists, demonstrating the well-established trust of doctors in the Prd approach.
Another important result of the survey – it should be noted – is that 85% of patients who were prescribed Mart therapy were also prescribed an additional inhaler, Saba al bisognor. Martha’s treatment is that the patient is taking the same combination of maintenance and reliever therapy, so Saba reliever medication should not be prescribed at the same time. For 67% of those patients who took both Martha and Saba (this one when needed), Saba was given at their request. This suggests that the level of asthma control offered by the Mart approach alone is not reflected in clinical practice.
“There are very few studies involving both patients and physicians to understand what real clinical practice is and what treatment regimens are preferred,” he comments. Giorgio Walter Canonica, among the authors of the study and director of the Clinic of Personalized Medicine for Asthma and Allergy and Professor of Respiratory Medicine, University of Humanitas, Milan “The APPaRENT results are encouraging and tell us that professionals’ preference for a proactive regimen with regular dosing of Ics / Laba, with or without Saba rescue inhaler, if needed, is an encouraging response to patients’ and Italians’ needs to gain control of their asthma.”
This survey, the note emphasizes, is part of GSK’s continued commitment to training patient trackers to ensure that patients themselves have new evidence that can help them achieve better asthma control.
