Phenotyping of Adult Asthmatics Visiting Pulmonology OPD of A Tertiary Care Hospital in South India

Abstract

Background: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease with different presentation, disease progression, and response to therapy. However, despite this recognition, the treatment approaches for asthma have been uniformly applied irrespective of these differences. Methods: This study is a cluster analysis done in 100 consecutive patients with Asthma diagnosed according to recent GINA guidelines visiting Pulmonology OPD in Apollo Hospitals, Chennai from January 2019 to March 2019. Results: Most patients were having Atopic asthma(75%) with history of atopy, family history of asthma and elevated Total IgE. The predominant inflammatory cell type was eosinophils(35%) followed by paucigranulocytic. Breathing difficulty and wheeze were prominent symptoms. There were 16 asthmatics who smoked currently. Six patients diagnosed as Sensitizer induced Occupational asthma (4 cement exposure, 1 coal exposure, 1 chalk dust exposure) and 1 patient diagnosed RADS. One patient had exacerbation prone asthma and one patient had corticosteroid dependent/resistant asthma. Conclusion: This study is an elementary attempt to categorize diagnosed adult asthmatics into various clusters to aid in better understanding of pathophysiological process of asthma and to tailor specific management plan for each subtype.

Keywords

• asthma
• disease
• phenotype
• onset
• atopic