Anxiety, eating disorders and menstrual disturbances risk in Spanish elite female paddlers.

Affiliated athletes are frequently subject to higher levels of anxiety due to the intensity of training, competition and many other factors. This anxiety can cause alterations in their health, both physically and mentally, such as menstrual irregularities, eating disorders, etc. In this work we have analysed the anxiety levels of a population of female affiliated paddlers and the possible consequences for their health. The results showed that a third of the female paddlers analysed have a moderate/high risk of suffering from anxiety; and within this group, the less sporting experience the athlete has, the greater the probability is of suffering from anxiety. Moreover, almost half the total of the female paddlers suffers from menstrual dysfunction before an important competition, with this number rising among high performance athletes, even though three out of every four adjust their training schedule to their menstrual cycle. Less-experienced female athletes, who show higher anxiety levels, also present a greater risk of suffering from eating disorders.

Asthma education taught by physical education teachers at grade schools: A randomised cluster trial.

OBJECTIVE: Assess whether the Asthma, Sport and Health (ASAH) programme taught by teachers improves asthmatics' quality of life, asthma knowledge, and reduces school absenteeism. DESIGN: Randomised cluster trial parallel group. PARTICIPANTS: 2293 students (203 asthmatic) in the Intervention School group (IS) and 2214 in the Comparison School (CS) (224 asthmatic) belonging to primary school. INTERVENTION: Implementation of the educational programme "Asthma, Sport and Health" at grade schools, taught by physical education teachers. MAIN OUTCOME: Quality of life according to the Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (PAQLQ). SECONDARY OUTCOMES: Asthma knowledge, asthma control, school absenteeism. RESULTS: After implementing the programme in the IS group, global quality of life improved significantly (p<0.001) as did their domains, symptoms (p<0.001), emotional function (p<0.001) and activity limitations (p<0.01), while in the CS group improvement was seen in global life quality (p<0.01) without any significant changes in the domains for emotional function and activity limitations. Asthma knowledge only increased in IS, among asthmatic students from 16.51 (CI 95% 16.04-16.98) to 18.16 (CI 95% 17.69-18.62) (p<0.001) and students without asthma from 15.49 (CI95% 15.36-15.63) to 17.50 (CI95% 17.36-17.64) (p<0.001). The multiple regression analysis showed that quality of life and its domains depend on asthma knowledge and above all, having well-controlled asthma. We found no decrease in school absenteeism. CONCLUSIONS: The ASAH programme improved certain quality of life aspects regarding asthma (emotional function and limitation of activities) and asthma knowledge, but it failed to reduce school absenteeism NCT01607749.

Indicators for childhood asthma in Spain, using the Rand method.

OBJECTIVE: To develop quality indicators to measure asthma care in primary health care. METHOD: A modified RAND was used, which included the systematic review of the literature in Embase, Cochrane and Pubmed Quality Agencies and Database. The work group identified the indicators, translated them into Spanish and resolved any duplicates. Each indicator is composed of several dimensions (access to care, clinical effectiveness, patient-centred quality and patient safety). A multidisciplinary panel of 98 professionals from all over Spain were invited to score each indicator using a Likert scale. After calculating the average and median of each indicator, this information was sent to those who responded (n=38) for a second round and further scoring. The agreement percentage for the group was obtained for each indicator. RESULTS: Of the 105 asthma indicators reviewed, we selected 46 that were presented to the panel of experts. In both Delphi phases, 37.1% of the members of the initial panel of experts responded. Of these, 26 were primary care paediatricians, six were pulmonologists, three were nurses, two were pharmacists and one was an allergist. For 32 indicators, agreement exceeded 70% and seven of those scored highest for the various care aspects for asthmatic children. CONCLUSION: Quality indicators are presented for the follow-up of asthma and their implementation in primary care, which have undergone a strict selection and agreement process by a multidisciplinary work group.

[Knowledge, attitudes and asthma quality of life of adolescents in schools. The need to educate our teaching centres]. / Situación de los conocimientos, las actitudes y la calidad de vida en asma de adolescentes y profesorado. Necesidad de educar en los centros de enseñanza.

INTRODUCTION: Knowledge and attitudes toward asthma can condition the integration of adolescents with asthma in school and affect their quality of life. Our objective was to determine the state of knowledge, attitudes on asthma in secondary schools, and its relationship to quality of life of pupils with asthma, as an early step to an educational intervention. METHODS: Descriptive and cross-sectional study of pupils aged 13 and 14 years old and their teachers in 26 schools of Seville and province. We used, as study tools, the Newcastle Asthma Knowledge Questionnaire, the Gibson attitudes towards asthma, and the Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire. To assess the normality of variables, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used, and for non-parametric variables the U Mann-Whitney and W Wilcoxon tests were used. For the association between variables, we use the regression coefficients and rho Spearman. RESULTS: We studied 3827 pupils (279 with asthma) and 548 teachers. All had little knowledge about asthma. The quality of life in asthma was mild to moderately affected, and lower in girls, 5.38±1.08 (95% CI=5.20 to 5.55) than in boys 5.77 (± 1.18) (95% CI=5.56 to 5.97), P=.0000. We found no relationship between knowledge, attitudes and quality of life in asthma. CONCLUSIONS: We found a low level of knowledge about asthma in pupils and teacher. Asthma sufferers have a mild to moderate asthma quality of life, which is worse for girls. Knowledge has no relationship with attitudes to asthma in all groups, or with the quality of life of asthma sufferers.

[The Spanish version of the Newcastle Asthma Knowledge Questionnaire for parents of children with asthma (NAKQ). Transcultural adaptation and reliability analysis]. / Versión española del NAKQ. Adaptación transcultural y análisis de fiabilidad y validez.

INTRODUCTION: The Newcastle Asthma Knowledge Questionnaire for parents of children with asthma (NAKQ) has proven to be a valid instrument for asthma knowledge assessment of patients and their parents. The widespread use of the SRS-22 in non-English-speaking countries requires its transcultural adaptation. Our objective was to obtain a version of the NAKQ questionnaire adapted to Spanish and to analyze its validity and reliability. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The Spanish version was obtained by using the forward/back-translation method with expert, bilingual translators. The questionnaire was administered to 157 parents with high knowledge (n = 78) and low knowledge (n = 79) of asthma. The differences in the number of answers between both groups were analyzed with the chi(2) test. Internal consistency was determined with Cronbach's alpha coefficient and test-retest reliability with the tau-b of Kendall correlation coefficient, and kappa statistics. RESULTS: At the end of the process, 23 of the 31 items were classified as of total equivalence and eight ase of moderate equivalence. The mean score of parents high knowledge was 23 +/- 2.94 and the mean score of parents low knowledge was 16.84 +/- 2.56. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant (p < 0.001). The overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.72, the Kendall's tau-b 0,8573 was significant (p = 0.01) and the kappa index showed good or very good consistency in more than half of the items. CONCLUSIONS: The Spanish version of the NAKQ has proven to be acceptable and culturally equivalent to the original version and it has a good degree of consistency, validity and reliability.