How to pay attention to the long-term management of childhood asthma

  With the changes in people’s living environment, lifestyle and social patterns, the disease population of children has also changed, from the traditional focus on acute diseases such as: infectious diseases, malnutrition diseases and infectious diseases, to the current rapid increase in chronic diseases. The treatment and rehabilitation of diseases have also changed from a biomedical model characterized by one-sided emphasis on biological factors to a biopsychosocial medical model to meet the needs of children’s overall physical and mental health. After years of continuous promotion of asthma prevention and treatment programs for children, the level of asthma diagnosis and treatment by pediatricians has improved greatly, but the level of asthma control in children has not improved correspondingly, which is due to the lack of effective long-term management and disease health education for children with asthma. Due to the lack of management, the rate of long-term adherence to treatment is still low and it is difficult to achieve the desired outcome.  In recent years, some hospitals in our province have established children’s asthma clinics, but the diagnosis and treatment of children’s asthma are treated in the same way as ordinary children, so that they are still in the cycle of “treating with symptoms and stopping medication without symptoms”, without continuous and regular medication, and without putting disease management and health education in an important position. The adherence rate of long-term treatment of childhood asthma is only 10-20%, and the treatment effect is poor. It can be seen that correct diagnosis and good treatment plan for childhood asthma is only half of the work, but good management and health education are the key to ensure compliance and efficacy, and the establishment of a practical disease management model is fundamental to improve prevention and treatment.  According to the experience of our pediatric asthma clinic, the most effective way to educate children with asthma is through “one-on-one” physician education at the time of consultation, while centralized education is less effective due to lack of targeting. Due to insufficient health education, the rate of correct knowledge of inhaled surface corticosteroids (ICS) is low, the proportion of inhaled treatment is low, the good control effect of surface corticosteroids combined with long-acting β2 agonists (ICS+LABA) is not fully accepted, the long-term use of leukotriene antagonists alone continues to increase, and immune-enhancing drugs and traditional Chinese medicine are still used more frequently in the treatment of asthma in children. The presence of these problems leads to poor asthma control and recurrent asthma attacks, which seriously affect the physical and psychological health of children.  In conclusion, there are still many problems in the diagnosis and treatment of asthma in children, among which the lack of long-term management and health education is the most important, and these problems seriously affect the improvement of the treatment of asthma in children. The diagnosis and treatment of asthma in children should be guided by the general principles of the “Asthma Prevention and Control Guidelines” and individualized in accordance with the actual situation in the region, and the special pediatric asthma clinic is the basis for the diagnosis and treatment, management and health education of asthma in children and the key to good control.