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Close to 30 Pct of Asthma Diagnosis Among Canadian Adults Not Justified
Led by Ottawa researcher Dr. Shawn Aaron, the study examined 496 people from eight Canadian cities who reported receiving a diagnosis of asthma from a physician.
When the participants were retested for asthma using the accepted clinical guidelines, it was found that 30 per cent had no evidence of asthma. Two thirds of these individuals were able to safely stop taking asthma medications.
"Our study suggests that there may be a substantial over-diagnosis of asthma in Canadian adults," said lead author Dr. Shawn Aaron, a Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and Head of Respiratory Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa.
"This is a serious issue because asthma medications are expensive and they can have side effects. Also, an inappropriate diagnosis of asthma may obscure the true cause of a patient's symptoms," Aaron said.
The study's original objective was to determine if obese people were more likely to be misdiagnosed with asthma, but the results showed that misdiagnosis was just as common in people of normal weight.
The prevalence of asthma in Canada and America is five per cent overall, and 10 per cent for obese people. The overall prevalence has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.
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