New Developments in the Home Monitoring of Asthma

There is an increasing demand to improve the outpatient management of asthma. The Center for Disease Control estimates that over 14 million individuals are affected by asthma in the United States (1). One study in the United States revealed that over 3 million workdays are lost and approximately 6 billion dollars are spent on this chronic illness each year. The direct cost of hospitalization alone accounted for over 1 billion dollars. Missed school days also accounted for close to a 700 million in indirect costs (2). In order to improve continuing care physicians often ask asthma patients to record their symptoms in diaries and lung function with peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) meters. The purpose of gathering this data is to judge response to therapies, predict exacerbations and treat asthma more efficiently. Physicians also use peak flow meter measurements to assist in classifying the severity of asthma. Despite controversies regarding the usefulness of peak flow meters (3, 4), experts continue to recommend home peak flow recordings to objectively assess lung function on a daily basis for patients with moderate to severe asthma (5).