Background:Background: Assessment of health state and health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) are limited by a child's age and cognitive ability. Parent-proxy reports are known to differ from children's reports. Simultaneous assessment using a parent-child dyad is an alternative approach....

Following a licence extension to include those aged 6-11 years, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) invited the manufacturer of omalizumab (Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK) to submit evidence for the clinical and cost effectiveness of this drug for patients with severe...

Background:Background: Underuse of controller therapy among Medicaid-enrolled children is common and leads to more emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations. However, there is little evidence about the relationship between medication adherence, outcomes and costs once controller...

Background and objective: In day-to-day practice, asthma treatment and self-management often fall short of the objectives defined by clinical practice guidelines. The objective of this study was to determine whether a population-based asthma disease management program, using broad-based...

Background: Asthma is a chronic disease, the two main components of which are inflammation and bronchoconstriction. Fluticasone propionate (FP) and salmeterol, a strategy that treats both main components of asthma, has been recently compared with FP plus montelukast in a randomised clinical...

Disease management, a new treatment model that may improve outcomes for patients with chronic illness, emphasises the need for formal assessments often not included in traditional approaches to healthcare, such as environmental exposures, self-care skills and functional status. This article...

Objectives: To identify the asthma prevalence rate, the total healthcare and asthma-related treatment costs, and the medical and pharmacy costs associated with different asthma medication usage patterns in a managed-care organisation (MCO). Study design and participants: The medical and pharmacy...

The Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS(R)) of the National Committee for Quality Assurance is a set of standardized performance measures, the goal of which is to enable purchasers and consumers to evaluate the quality of different health plans. The HEDIS(R) `Use of Appropriate...

Asthma in the US is widespread, with incidence rates and morbidity increasing dramatically over the last 2 decades. The cost of asthma-related morbidity and mortality is large. There is substantial and convincing evidence that environmental factors are associated with asthma exacerbation, and...

Objective: Patients with severe asthma often require short courses of oral corticosteroids in addition to their daily inhaled steroid to maintain adequate lung function. The objective of this study was to compare two management strategies for the treatment of severe asthma. A budesonide-based...