Predicting the chances of severe asthma attacks…can it be done?
The European Respiratory Agency recently published the results of a three year study on asthma patients. The researchers came up with a new type of score - labeled the ‘Tenor Risk Score’ - which they say could help identify people who are most at risk of going down with very severe, difficult-to-treat attacks of asthma.
This score takes numerous factors into account such as age, weight, breathing tests, exercise response, medical history, smoking frequency and more.
The scorecard can range from 0 to 18. Patients with a score of 0-4 are considered low risk. A score of 5-7 indicated moderate risk and these patients were three and a half times more likely to have a severe asthma attack than those in the low risk category.
Those with a score of 8 or more were about 12 times more likely to have such attacks than the low risk group.
The ability to predict severe asthma attacks can be a huge benefit to patients, healthcare providers and others as well.
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