PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Malak Shaheen
AU  - Emad Mohamed
AU  - Mona El Ganzory
TI  - Asthma control test (ACT) versus intermittent oscillation system (IOS) assessment for control of asthmatic children
DP  - 2011 Sep 01
TA  - European Respiratory Journal
PG  - p4256
VI  - 38
IP  - Suppl 55
4099  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p4256.short
4100  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p4256.full
SO  - Eur Respir J2011 Sep 01; 38
AB  - Background: In spite of the great development of international guidelines for the diagnosis and the treatment of asthma, there is continuing evidence of poor control of childhood asthma.Aim of this work was to evaluate the subjective asthma control test (ACT) against the subjective impulse oscillation system (IOS) measures of the airways resistance in asthmatic children.Subject and methods: This study included 35 asthmatic children. All the study children were subjected to the following; full medical history, clinical examination and spirometric FEV1 measurements (to fulfill GINA assessment for asthma control). Children's assessment by ACT (using an Arabic version) was done. Finally; Impulse Oscillation test (IOS) was done to compare the objective results with the subjective results of ACT.Results: Score 19 was the cut off value differentiating children's asthma control (compared to the gold standard IOS cut off values). Moderate agreement between CACT/ACT test for asthma control and R5 results; kappa test = 0.54 (P<0.0001) was reported. While agreement between IOS results and GINA tool for asthma control was much less significant; kappa test= 0.36 P>0.05. Nevertheless; there was highly significant negative correlations between total scores of CACT/ACT and values of IOS results; P<0.001. The correlation coefficient for the internal consistency of the CACT/ACT was 0.89 as an evidence for ACT reliability. Also accuracy of CACT/ACT was assured by calculating area under the ROC curve (AUC) and it was 0.900.Conclusion: This study confirms that asthma control test (ACT) is a valid and cost effective instrument for assessment of control in asthmatic children.