A potential pitfall in provider assessments of the quality of asthma control.

Background: Pediatricians elicit information about asthma control from parents to help formulate management plans. If parents of children with significant asthma symptoms inappropriately indicate good control, physician recommendations may not be optimal. We examined whether a single general question about asthma control might lead to inaccurate assessment of severity.

Design/methods: Children 3-7 years of age who met the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) criteria for mild persistent to severe asthma were identified from 40 urban schools. A phone survey of their parents provided demographic information, symptom frequency, medication use, and general interpretation of their child's asthma control. Chi-square analyses compared the parent's general interpretation of control with demographic characteristics and measures of asthma severity.

Results: One hundred sixty of 224 eligible children participated in this study. Seventy-eight percent were described as in good asthma control. General assessment of asthma control did not vary by demographic characteristics. Parents were as likely to describe children with daily asthma symptoms in good control as they were to describe children with less frequent symptoms in good control. Parents were less likely to report good control in children using daily rescue medications when compared with children with less frequent medication use (65% vs 82%, P =.03), but the majority of children in both groups was described as having good control.

Conclusions: Most parents underestimated the severity of their child's asthma and reported good control with their global assessment. Parents frequently reported good control even when the children had daily asthma symptoms. Pediatricians should ask about specific asthma symptoms during patient encounters because a global question about asthma control likely will result in underestimations of asthma severity.