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Asthma Facts

Asthma is a chronic lung condition that causes breathing problems ranging from mild to severe in sufferers of all ages. These symptoms include dyspnea, cough, wheeze, and hyperreactivity to environmental exposures. Asthma most commonly develops during childhood and is responsible for an estimated 20% of all lost school days. The incidence of asthma has increased steadily; by some accounts as much as threefold, over the last 25 years. There are an estimated 300 million patients with asthma worldwide, including 20 million in the United States.¹

Quality of life studies show that asthma limits both adults and children in the performance of activities of daily living, including work, leisure and management of the home environment in adults, and school, physical education and leisure in children.²

• Nearly 30% of caregivers lost workdays during a study covering 12 months because of their children’s asthma.  Over 13% lost > 5 days.²
  
  
• 12.8 million school days in children and 10.1 million work days in adults were missed in 2003 as a result of asthma.³
  
  
• Indirect costs of asthma associated with time lost from work by the parents, disruption of family life, and the child’s school activities are almost twice as high as the direct cost for patients under the age of 18 years.²
  
  
• The drug subclass of antiasthmatics or bronchodilators resulted in the third highest total(69,507,000) of drug mentions (drugs, supplied, administered or prescribed) to patients at a physician’s office in 2004.⁴
  
  
• Each year in the United States, about 11 million patients have an acute deterioration of respiratory symptoms (i.e. asthma exacerbation) after a respiratory viral infection or exposure to environmental allergens or irritants.¹
  
  
• In 2004, in the United States, asthma resulted in 14.7 million outpatient visits to physician offices and hospital outpatient departments, and 1.8 million visits to emergency departments.³
  
  
• In the United States, severe asthma exacerbations lead to over 400,000 hospitalizations, each year, and these hospitalizations constitute about one-third of the total $11.5 billion in annual asthma-related health expenditures.¹

1. Krishnan et. al. “Mortality in Patients Hospitalized from Asthma Exacerbations in the United States”, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Volume 174 2006
2. Milgram H. “Unfulfilled Expectations in Asthma”, Allergy and Asthma Proceedings, Volume 28, pp111-113, 2007.
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics, Asthma Prevalence, Health Care Use and Mortality: United States, 2003-05. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/ashtma03-05/asthma03-05.htm (accessed November 29, 2007).
4. Hing E, Cherry DK, Woodwell DA. National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2004 summary. Advance data from vital and health statistics; no 374. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2006.

For more information on asthma and its effects, we invite you to browse the following websites:

www.asthmainamerica.com

www.nih.gov

www.fda.gov

www.lungusa.org/asthma

www.aarc.org

www.acrn.org

www.thoracic.org

www.acaai.org

www.namdrc.org