Asthma, Rhinitis, Other Respiratory Diseases: Rapid PublicationA comprehensive study of the direct and indirect costs of adult asthma☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Subject interviews
The data collection protocol was approved by the University of California, San Francisco, Committee on Human Research. The University of California, San Francisco Asthma Panel sampled persons with asthma recorded on visit logs maintained by a random sample of northern California adult pulmonologists, allergist-immunologists, and family practice physicians.29, 30 At the time of original enrollment, subjects ranged in age from 18 to 50 years and were interviewed at 18- to 24-month intervals
Demographics and self-rated disease severity
Table I
Characteristics Frequency N % Female sex 285 71 Race/ethnicity Hispanic 43 11 Non-Hispanic white 289 72 Black 27 7 Asian/pacific Islander 26 6 Native American 15 4 Unknown 1 0 Education Less than high school 11 3 High school graduate 75 19 Some college 147 37 College graduate 80 20 Postgraduate 88 22 Marital status Single (never married) 55 14 Married/long-term relationship 267 67 Widowed/separated/divorced 56 14 Unknown 23 6 Family income ≤$20,000
Discussion
The present study of the costs of asthma, like many before it, is based on a clinical sample. Unlike those before it, however, it derives from the survey responses of persons with asthma from random samples of a wide range of physicians, and it includes a more varied array of direct and indirect costs and incorporates alternative values for the unit price for hospital admissions. We found that direct medical costs averaged $2697 per person (using the base case unit price for hospital
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the mentorship of Dr Curtis Henke, deceased.
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Cited by (0)
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Supported by grants R01 ES10906, R01 HL56538, and R01 OH03480.
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Reprint requests: Edward H. Yelin, PhD, Box 0920, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143-0920.