Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. E-mail: laurent. This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence 4. Real-world data describing management of patients with severe asthma are limited.
French pulmonologists from nonacademic hospitals completed questionnaires on patient characteristics and ongoing asthma treatment for severe asthmatic patients observed during the inclusion period. In addition, we collected data from patients via self-assessment questionnaires. The mean age of the patients analysed was This study provides insight into the characteristics and management of severe asthma in France and may help improve knowledge on this pathology, which represents a high burden to healthcare.
Asthma is an inflammatory chronic airway disease characterised by dyspnoea, wheeze, cough and chest tightness. However, epidemiological data regarding severe asthma in real life are scarce. Recently, the asthmaPOP survey estimated prevalence of severe asthma in France to be 3. Severe asthma cases represent the majority of health costs for asthma, which are mainly due to indirect costs absenteeism, lack of productivity rather than medical costs, like medication, even if new treatments are relatively expensive.
The costs drastically increase as disease control decreases, with the cost being five times higher for uncontrolled asthma [ 7 ]. Furthermore, severe asthma has been identified as a heterogeneous disease with various clinical phenotypes of differing severity, which develop through distinct mechanisms [ 8 , 9 ]. The identification and characterisation of asthma subtypes have already led to the development of new therapies, including monoclonal antibodies directed against immunoglobulin Ig E omalizumab [ 6 ] or against interleukin IL -5 mepolizumab, reslizumab, benralizumab [ 10 , 11 ], and will be valuable for developing new drugs and defining better asthma management.
To date, severe asthma remains poorly understood, and the impact of recent therapeutic advances on the management of this disease has been insufficiently studied. The aim of our study was to describe the clinical characteristics of adults with severe asthma and their management in French nonacademic hospitals.
