Jason Cunningham looks at the connection between allergy and asthma, and the benefits provided by the allergy identification and management (AIM) initiative.
Allergy affects approximately 50% of UK children (six million)1 and approximately 44% of UK adults (21 million).2 Identifying allergies early can provide much-needed answers both for patients and healthcare professionals and has been proven to reduce healthcare costs in asthma by more than half.3
What’s the problem?
The NHS spends around £1 billion a year treating and caring for people with asthma; despite these interventions, on average three people a day die from asthma, and asthma exacerbations hospitalise someone every eight minutes.4 The National Review of Asthma Deaths identified that in the year before death, triggers for asthma exacerbations had not been documented in approximately 50% of cases. As such, it recommends that factors that trigger or exacerbate asthma should be documented in the medical records and personal asthma action plans of all patients with asthma.5
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