Retrospective monitoring in the management of persistent asthma.

Background: There is still considerable disagreement on several aspects of monitoring asthma with symptom score and peak expiratory flow (PEF).

Objective: To investigate patient adherence to a retrospective diary-card monitoring method in patients with poorly controlled persistent asthma, in a clinical management setting; to develop improved methods for fast manual entry data into a computer; and to generate real-time informative graphs of the data.

Methods: In 115 consecutive adult patients we applied a diary-card monitoring method in which the patient records symptom score and PEF.