Effectiveness of pharmacist interventions in the self management of asthma in the community setting : a systematic review

Abstract

Background: Asthma is a global health problem affecting people of all ages. Despite huge progress on the management of asthma in recent decades, suboptimal health outcomes associated with under-management is still commonly encountered. Self management was shown to be a both clinically and cost effective approach to improve asthma outcomes in some studies. The role of pharmacists in promoting self management of asthma was explored in individual studies but limited review was conducted to assess its effectiveness.

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of pharmacist interventions on the self management of asthma patients in the community setting and to examine if the benefits, if any, could be realized by implementing such interventions in Hong Kong.

Methods: A systematic search was conducted on Medline, Embase, Pubmed and Cochrane Library without time limit to identify studies assessing the clinical, humanistic and economic outcomes of pharmacist-led self management interventions towards adolescent or adult patients with asthma compared to usual care. Risk of bias of studies was appraised using a tool adapted from the Effective Practice of Organization of Care version of the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool.

Results: The search yielded 504 studies of which eight studies were eligible for inclusion. The included studies involved 1674 patients, were published between 2001 and 2008 and were originated from seven countries. Discrepancies of findings were noted in the majority of outcome measures reviewed. Significant benefits of pharmacist interventions included improvement of inhalation technique and reduction of rescue medication use although no significant effect was observed with regard to forced expiratory volume in one second and days lost from work or school.

Conclusions: The evidence of pharmacist interventions on the self management of asthma remains inconsistent, probably attributable to variable quality of studies and heterogeneous assessment methods and outcome measures. Future research should aim to produce randomized, controlled studies incorporating allocation concealment with a follow-up period of over one year. Nevertheless, pharmacist-led asthma self management initiatives could be implemented at the general outpatient clinic setting in Hong Kong to further improve the quality of primary care.