Health Quadrant

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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In some people, the airways or bronchial tubes are very sensitive to irritants. This leads to the inflammatory condition called asthma. Asthma patients show mild to extreme difficulty in breathing during an attack.

Medication available today is fairly effective at treating asthma. These medications are of two kinds. One is called ‘Quick relief medicines’ or relievers. As the name imples, they relieve the symptoms and help to restore normal breathing.

The other type are the ‘Long term control medicines’ and act as preventers.

When asthma symptoms worsen, the patient is usually given quick relief medication. Typically, these medicines produce relief in just a few minutes.

The preventers are taken regularly (usually daily) and need to be consumes for a long period of time. They bring the chronic nature of the symptoms under control and help prevent asthma attacks.