Monitoring asthma: no matter how?

The ultimate goal of asthma care is to obtain and maintain control, and optimise prognosis for patients [1]. Monitoring and treatment adjustments tailored to patients’ needs and wishes are essential to achieve controlled asthma and are therefore a fundamental part of comprehensive asthma management. However, the best strategy for asthma monitoring and its frequency are still unknown [2]. In daily practice, healthcare professionals combine scheduled routine clinical visits, lung function tests, repeated targeted education and questionnaires to evaluate asthma control and/or quality of life. Furthermore, adherence to treatment is strongly associated with asthma control [1, 3]. Although proper treatment of asthma could prevent exacerbations, several studies have suggested that the majority of patients do not have adequate control of their disease [4]. For a large part, this may be explained by suboptimal adherence; in patients with asthma adherence varies between 30 and 70% [5–7].