Is it Bronchial Asthma or Eosinophilia-Think before you treat.

Darshan K. Bajaj; Abhishek Dubey; Jyoti Bajpai; Mona Asnani; Surya Kant

Volume : VII, Issue : IV, April - 2018

Is it Bronchial Asthma or Eosinophilia-Think before you treat.

Darshan K. Bajaj, Abhishek Dubey, Jyoti Bajpai, Mona Asnani, Surya Kant

Abstract :

Common respiratory symptoms of various respiratory disorders many a times cause diagnostic dilemma to the treating physician leading to misdiagnosis and maltreatment of patients. Purpose of this study was to differentiate onchial asthma and transient eosinophilic conditions. Objective–Objectives of this study were to distinguish onchial Asthma from eosinophilia and to assess mal–treatment with inhaled corticosteroids. Material and Methods– A prospective observational study was conducted over a period of three years (September 2013 to September 2016) at King George�s Medical University, Lucknow, India. Patients attending out–patient services at department of Respiratory medicine from various government and private health set–ups were enrolled for the study.A total of 1000 subjects who were labeled as onchial asthma from different sources were enrolled comprising of 464(46.4%) male and 536(53.6%) female patients. The data was analyzed using chi–square test. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0 was applied. Results– 244 (24.4%) subjects consisting of 148(14.8%) male and 96(9.6%) female patients were found to be wrongly labeled as onchial asthma and inhalers were stopped however 23(9.43%) patients including 14 females and 9 males had relapse in their symptoms and were restarted on inhalers, rest of the 221 patients remained symptom free at 12 months of follow up. Conclusion– In view of findings of this study it was observed that almost one fourth of the patients who were patients of transient eosinophilic condition were misdiagnosed as onchial asthma and were on unnecessary inhalational treatment.