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Does Your Child Have
Asthma?
Parent Reports and
Medication Use for Pediatric Asthma
Eric M. Roberts, MD, PhD
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2003;157:449-455.
Objective To assess parental reporting
of diagnosis used in surveys as an indicator
of pediatric asthma prevalence.
Methods Analysis of the Medical Expenditure
Panel Survey, 1996 and 1997 (10 404 children
aged from 0 to 17 years). All values are
expressed as mean (SE).
Results Asthma medications were purchased for
2.5% (0.2%) of children. Parents of 45.4%
(4.0%) of these children failed to report
asthma, including 41.3 (10.5%) of those for whom
maintenance medications were purchased. These
findings remained unchanged when very young
children were excluded from the sample. Controlling
for insurance coverage, no racial, ethnic, or
socioeconomic disparities in reported asthma
were found; however, poor children were more
likely to have maintenance medications purchased (odds
ratio, 4.9; 95% confidence interval, 2.3-10.4).
Conclusions Surveys of parental reports of
asthma overlook many children with active
disease. Dependence on parental reports may
underestimate the prevalence of serious asthma among
poor children. The parents in this study who
fail to report asthma may represent a group
that perceives their children's disease as
less serious a problem despite active purchasing of
medications.
From the Department of Pediatrics and Institute
for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San
Francisco.
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