Specialist Perception of Severe Asthma in Korea: A Questionnaire Survey
Authors
Mi Ae Kim ; Heung Woo Park ; Byung Keun Kim ; So Young Park ; Ga Young Ban ; Ji Hyang Lee ; Jin An ; Ji Su Shim ; Youngsoo Lee ; Ha Kyeong Won ; Hwa Young Lee ; Kyoung Hee Sohn ; Sung Yoon Kang ; So Young Park ; Hyun Lee ; Min Hye Kim ; Jae Woo Kwon ; Sun Young Yoon ; Jae Hyun Lee ; Chin Kook Rhee ; Ji Yong Moon ; Taehoon Lee ; So Ri Kim ; Jong Sook Park ; Sang Heon Kim ; Jae Won Jeong ; Sang Hoon Kim ; Young Il Koh ; Yeon Mok Oh ; An Soo Jang ; Kwang Ha Yoo ; You Sook Cho
The Working Group on Severe Asthma of the Korean Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology recently published an expert opinion paper on the management of severe asthma in Korea. When developing a consensus, the working group encountered several diagnostic and treatment issues and decided to perform a questionnaire survey of Korean specialists with regard to severe asthma. An e-mail with a uniform resource locator link to the questionnaire was sent to 121 asthma specialists, of whom 44.6% responded. The most commonly accepted definitions of severe asthma were a history of fatal exacerbation or an asthma-triggered need for mechanical ventilation, 3-4 oral corticosteroid (OCS) bursts/year, and maintenance of OCS therapy for 3-6 months per year. Before diagnosing severe asthma, most physicians contemplate chest computed tomography, seek to control chronic rhinosinusitis, and consider poor inhaler compliance. For patients with uncontrolled severe asthma accompanied by type 2 (T2)-high inflammation, most biologics available in Korea were considered appropriate, but gaps were apparent in terms of T2-low asthma treatments. These findings about specialist perception of diagnosis and treatment of severe asthma will inform the use of emerging new drugs and facilitate personalized therapy.