Self-management: At the core of asthma care

Supported asthma self-management — which includes patient education, an action plan and regular review — seems to reduce the need for hospital services and unscheduled consultations, according to a new meta-review. In addition, supported self-management probably improves asthma control and quality of life.

The ‘meta-review’ consisted of a systematic overview of 27 previous systematic reviews, which included 244 randomised controlled trials (RCTs). The authors included another 13 RCTS published since the last search dates of the previous reviews.

The authors concluded that supported self-management seems to reduce A&E attendances, hospitalisations and unscheduled consultations. Based on four meta-analyses, for example,
the proportion of patients hospitalised declined from 7.2-25.9% (depending on the study) to 4.6-14.0% and the proportion making A&E attendances declined from 19.4-30.7% to 13.1-22.4%.