Living with severe asthma – a social burden: a qualitative study

Introduction:
Asthma is defined as a chronic inflammatory disease that significantly affects the bronchial tubes, making breathing more difficult during strenuous activities. Severe asthma is a complex and heterogeneous respiratory disease, with persistent symptoms, frequent asthma attacks and numerous comorbidities. It affects between 3.00 and 10.00% of people worldwide and has a major impact not only on their personal lives but also on the lives of their families.

Aim:
To investigate to what extent severe asthma interferes with the patient’s daily and cultural-social life.

Material and methods:
We conducted a qualitative study where we selected patients diagnosed with severe asthma based on spirometric parameters. Subsequently, their basic anthropometric parameters (body height and body weight) were measured. On the basis of personal interviews with the patients and the answers obtained by us, we processed the raw data into their actual form.

Results:
In our research, we found a significant impact of severe asthma on patients’ quality of life, not only in terms of limitations in various activities (physical exertion, sports or work routine), but also in psychological aspects.

Conclusions:
The health status of patients is directly proportional to their lifestyle. There are many variables that affect the movement of the diaphragm and airflow through the airways, especially in patients with severe asthma.