Demographic characteristics of bronchial asthma in Turkey

Abstract

The overlap of symptoms traditionally associated with both chronic obstructive lung disease and asthma seriously compromises identification of asthmatic subjects by symptoms alone. Furthermore, the relationship of cigarette smoking, the major cause of chronic obstructive lung disease to asthma, is unclear but is potentially important. Thus, the traditional clinical view that attaches the diagnostic label asthma to the young, atopic, wheezing patient and chronic obstructive lung disease to the middle aged, smoking, coughing patient may obscure rather than enhance our understanding of the potential risk factors involved in the production of these unique diseases and the natural history of their development. In the present study demographic characteristics of asthmatic patients who attended to the asthma outpatient clinics of three Chest Diseases Departments in Istanbul were determined. 349 patients were asked about their illness. Functional and laboratory investigations were done to the patients. The patients were asked about their sex, profession, educational status, place and date of birth, symptoms, relationship with provoking factors and medications, family history, smoking status, onest and duration of symptoms and the time period over which the symptoms are increasing. Respiratory function tests with early and late reversibility, total and in some patients specific IgE levels, skin prick tests, radiographic determinations were analyzed. Clinical and functional staging; relationship between prick tests, total IgE and eosinophilia and provoking factors were investigated.