[Impact of integrated asthma treatment on the patients' quality of life]. / Impacto del tratamiento integral del asma sobre la calidad de vida de los pacientes.

BACKGROUND: Patient's perception about the effect of disease's manifestations on daily activities is called health-related quality of life, and it is used to evaluate the individual response to treatment. At present, there are some questionnaires designed to evaluate it. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of integral treatment dosage on quality of life in asthmatic adults. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A prospective, longitudinal and experimental study was made. We included male and female adult patients, with allergic asthma. A standardized questionnaire of quality of life was applied to all of them in every visit, for eight times. The integral treatment was based on Global Initiative for Asthma judgments. RESULTS: Ten patients were included, 70% of them were women. The media age was 37.4 +/- 15.73 years old. The asthma was diagnosed as intermittent in 10% cases, mild persistent in 20%, moderate persistent in 20% and severe persistent in 50% patients. The group of age most frequently affected was that of 20 to 30 years old. The media index of quality of life was 2.43 +/- 0.91 at the first visit and it was 5.73 +/- 1.11 at eighth visit. It was found a significant difference. CONCLUSION: Integral treatment improves quality of life in asthmatic adults.

[Impact of integral allergic treatment in the quality life of patients with allergic rhinitis]. / Impacto del tratamiento alergológico integral en la calidad de vida de pacientes con rinitis alérgica.

BACKGROUND: The quality of life is the perception of a patient about functional effects of his illness and therapy. Recently, appropriate instruments were devised to evaluate the health related with the quality of life, as the standardized and validated questionnaires for rhino-conjunctivitis. OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of integral allergological treatment upon the quality of life of patients with allergic rhinitis that were attended as outpatients at the Service of Allergy and Clinical Immunology of Hospital Universitario de Puebla. MATERIAL AND METHODS: It was carried out a longitudinal, prospective, experimental and prolective study in patients of both sexes, older than 18 years old, with diagnosis of allergic rhinitis; life quality was evaluated by means of the application of a validated and standardized questionnaire every 15 days during 4 months. After being included in the study, patients received the integral allergological treatment conformed by educational measures, environmental control, pharmacotherapy and specific immunotherapy. We determined frequency for qualitative variables and average for quantitative variables. The averages were compared by means of variance analysis. The significance value was established down in 0.05. RESULTS: Thirteen patients were included, 61.5% of them were male. The average age was 33.2 (SD 17.0). There was a significative difference in quality of life index when patient was included in comparison with the indexes in subsequent visits. The most frequent allergic rhinitis was the moderate-severe persistent type, with a 76.9% rate. CONCLUSION: Integral allergological treatment improves quality of life of patients with allergic rhinitis.