Pregledni rad

Asthma Epidemiology and Public Health Impact

Sanja Popović Grle ; Klinika za plućne bolesti "Jordanovac"

Sažetak

Asthma has been known since ancient times, and in the middle of the last century it was separated from other diseases associated with heavy breathing (like cardiac or renal asthma and COPD). By the end of the twentieth century, asthma was recognized as a significant public health problem causing incapability, high healthcare costs and preventable deaths. Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease and also among the ten most common diseases in adults. The results of asthma prevalence studies depend on investigated elements, symptoms, established diagnosis, drug costs as well as age groups. The qualitative and standardized investigations on asthma prevalence (International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, ISAAC) performed in the last 15 years have pointed to a large variation in the prevalence rates, thus showing that up to 20 diff erent prevalence rates have been recorded in various parts of the world: from 0.7% in Macau to 18.4% in Scotland. New investigations of the World Health Organization (WHO) have shown that the medium world prevalence rate of asthma is 4.5%. Results of the ISAAC study conducted in many Croatian counties show that Croatia belongs to a group with lower to medium high asthma prevalence, i.e. 5-8% at the age of 14 years. In the last decades, the number of asthmatic patients has been increasing up to 50% every ten years. Recent researches have indicated that the further increase of asthma prevalence has been stopped, at least in countries with high prevalence rates. With regard to healthcare costs, asthma ranks 5th place. Mortality rate of asthma is not high (0.23/100.000 inhabitants) and has been reduced in the last 30 years. However, in most cases it could have been prevented. At present it is considered that 1 out of 250 deaths in the world is caused by asthma.

Ključne riječi

asthma; epidemiology; prevalence; treatment costs; public health impact

Hrčak ID:

106470

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/106470

Datum izdavanja:

15.5.2013.

Podaci na drugim jezicima: hrvatski

Posjeta: 4.513 *