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Pharmacists increasingly play a role in the management of chronic health conditions such as asthma. But to date there has been no systematic review of the impact of pharmacy interventions on asthma outcomes.
Therefore, a team of international researchers reviewed results from 21 previous studies in adult asthma patients.
They found that nine out of ten studies reporting current asthma control showed a positive impact from pharmacy interventions. Interventions were also associated with improvement of asthma severity in three studies and asthma symptoms in eight studies.
Reporting in the European Respiratory Journal (online, 1 April 2016)[1]
, the team say the findings show that pharmacists have a positive impact on various clinical asthma outcomes. But, noting that study outcomes were heterogeneous, they say further research evaluating the impact of pharmacists’ interventions should use a standard set of indicators.
References
[1] Garcia-Cardenas V, Armour C, Benrimoj SI et al. Pharmacists’ interventions on clinical asthma outcomes: a systematic review. European Respiratory Journal 2016;47:1043–1046. doi: 10.1183/13993003.01497-2015
