Evaluating Health-related Quality of Life in Asthma

抄録

Recently, in the field of asthma, there has been a substantial number of clinical trials which include health-related quality of life (HRQoL) as one of the outcomes. These studies employ two types of instruments for assessing HRQoL, generic and disease-specific instruments each being used individually or in combination.
It has been proposed that treatments for patients aimed at increasing longevity, prevention of future morbidity, or making patients feel better. To achieve the last purpose, it is considered that HRQoL should be evaluated. Moreover, there are several reports demonstrating only weak to moderate correlations between physiological variables and HRQoL in patients with asthma. This is another reason for the importance of direct evaluation of HRQoL in conjunction with the conventional clinical indices.
Pharmacological interventions based on guidelines seem to improve not only pulmonary function but also HRQoL in patients with asthma. However, all managements do not necessarily improve HRQoL, therefore assessing HRQoL is strongly recommended in clinical trials.
However, the benefit of including HRQoL in evaluation of patients management is still unknown. It is valid that evaluation of HRQoL in clinical practice can both reveal patients problems that were not spontaneously identified by patients themselves and allow physicians focus on specific problems. Until such data are available, the benefit of assessing HRQoL in clinical practice will remain uncertain.
Although conducting more clinical trials that prove efficacy in clinical practice is required, consideration of HRQoL in patients has recently been recognized as an important topic in the asthma field. It can be said that outcomes in health care for asthma will shift from the physiological aspect to humanistic aspect.