Comparison of quality of life between asthmatic and healthy school children.

There are only a few studies which have assessed the impact of asthma on the quality of life (QoL) compared to healthy children. In this study we wanted to compare QoL between asthmatic and healthy children in a population based setting. We surveyed 2159 children aged 11-15 yr with a Child Health Questionnaire; a generic QoL measure for children. This method gives a profile of the QoL consisting of 11 scales giving a range from 0 to 100. Asthma was defined based on the ISAAC questionnaire on asthma and asthma symptoms. In all, 192 children (8.9%) reported to have asthma diagnosed by a doctor and 61 of them (2.8% of all children) had been symptomatic during the previous month. Among these symptomatic children significantly impaired QoL was observed in 8 of the 11 scales compared to non-asthmatics. The most affected scales were those defining the physical part of child's QoL: Mean General Health scores were 60 for asthmatic and 74 for non-asthmatic children and mean Bodily Pain scores 71 and 86, respectively. Symptoms during longer periods were associated with an overall decreased QoL. In conclusion, a child's asthma impairs the QoL and especially the physical dimensions.

Hand-held turbine spirometer: agreement with the conventional spirometer at baseline and after exercise.

Portable hand-held spirometers are widely used in outpatient clinics and in field surveys when examining children for asthma. However, the validity of the results obtained from the hand-held spirometers has not been assessed in population-based studies. We evaluated the agreement between the forced expiratory volume (FEV1) values got by the conventional flow volume spirometer (FVS) and the pocket-sized turbine spirometer (TS) at baseline and after exercise, among the 212 children screened for asthma and asthma-like symptoms from a population of 1633 school-aged children. The comparison was made between and within three diagnostic groups: clinical asthma (n = 34), possible asthma (n = 31), and controls (n = 147). In general, the differences in FEV1 between the FVS and the TS were small. For all children, the mean difference in FEV1 and the limits of agreement (difference +/-2 s.d.) was 0.05 l (0.23 to -0.13) at baseline and 0.06 l (0.24 to -0.12) after exercise. No significant differences were observed in the agreement between the diagnostic groups. In conclusion, although FEV1 results obtained by the hand-held spirometer are not interchangeable with those by the conventional spirometer, they are in reasonable agreement. The agreement is similar both at baseline and after exercise, and is not influenced by the presence of asthma.