Diagnostic accuracy of primary care asthma/COPD working hypotheses, a real life study.

Unlabelled: Misdiagnoses are inevitable when working hypotheses of asthma/COPD of General Practitioners (GPs) are not checked by spirometry. To reduce misdiagnoses, Asthma/COPD-support services (AC-services) offer support by performing spirometry assessed together with written medical history by consulting pulmonologists.

Research Questions: Which criteria do GPs use to justify their asthma/COPD working hypotheses? How do diagnostic assessments by an AC-service change GPs' working hypotheses? Do GPs' justifications for their working hypotheses influence the extent to which working hypotheses correspond with diagnoses given by an AC-service?

Method: We investigated the working hypotheses of 17 GPs for 284 patients with respiratory problems and their justifications: "clinical symptoms", "office spirometry", or "specialist's correspondence".

Employment status and quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Objectives: Recently, the conditions for disability benefits were redefined in several countries, stimulating employees to participate on the labour market as long as reasonably possible. Little is known of labour participation and quality of life (QoL) of employees with chronic diseases. This study examines the associations between employment status and QoL in COPD patients.

Environmental exposure reduction in high-risk newborns: where do we start?

Background: When analyzing the effect of environmental exposure reduction measures on asthma in high-risk children, one must know how far asthmatic families already have applied such measures, because this would affect the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions aimed at reducing environmental exposure.

Objective: To describe the room for improvement by asthmatic families in mite, pet, and food allergen reducing measures and in parental passive smoking and to determine the resulting levels of mite and pet allergens by the applied sanitation measures.

Methods: Data were sampled by observation, weekly diary entries, and questionnaire when the infant was 6 months old and 1 year old.