Quite a few people in the UK would do just that, according to a recent study that was published in the journal, BMC Pulmonary Medicine. It’s a well-established fact that asthma is not as well-controlled as it could be.

A big reason for this is that those of us with asthma don’t always do what we’re supposed to do. For instance, we don’t take our medicine as often as prescribed, we don’t avoid our triggers 100% of the time, and we fail to recognize (or at least acknowledge) that using our quick-relief inhalers several times a week is a sign that something’s not working.

Is it that we’re “bad” patients? Not really. Another explanation could be that asthma management plans are too complex for most patients’ tastes. At least, that’s what this small UK study found. Here are the highlights:

• Researchers surveyed 147 patients, aged 18 years and older, with moderate or severe asthma from 15 general practices in the UK
• Participants answered a questionnaire that asked them to choose between 9 different pairs of choices having to do with asthma management
• Six attributes of care were examined (which had been drawn from a previous study with 400 patients):
  • importance of gaining relief of asthma symptoms from treatment
  • dose of inhaled steroid
  • availability & content of personalized asthma action plan
  • management of asthma flares
  • numbers of inhalers prescribed for routine use
  • response to a deterioration

What researchers learned as a result of the questionnaire was that patients strongly preferred a simple plan of treatment. Patients with moderate to severe asthma said that they would rather have a simplified and personalized plan (that used only 1 type of inhaler) than absolute symptom relief.

A key component of asthma control (not to mention controlling health care costs) is effective self management by asthma patients. Researchers emphasized that a key step in improving self management is to understand what patients consider important. And according to this study, what patients consider important is “keeping it simple”.

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