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Clinical Investigations: AsthmaAsthma, Employment Status, and Disability Among Adults Treated by Pulmonary and Allergy Specialists
Section snippets
Overview
This study analyzed the impact of disease severity, demographic characteristics, psychosocial factors, and occupational variables on the prevalence of work disability among adults with asthma. The persons with asthma whom we studied were derived from a random sample of northern California, board-certified pulmonary or allergy subspecialty internists. These physicians maintained a registry of all persons meeting standard clinical criteria for asthma who were seen for treatment in the outpatient
Demographics
We interviewed 601 subjects. Their demographic characteristics and smoking histories are presented in Table 1. The gender mix was predominantly female (69%); Hispanics and nonwhites comprised 33% of study subjects. Two thirds, 401 (67%), had attended at least some college. Although 226 (38%) had smoked cigarettes at some point (defined as a lifetime consumption of more than 100 cigarettes), only 42 (7%) were current smokers at the time of interview.
Asthma Severity and Health Status
Table 2 includes the measures in the severity
Discussion
We found that work disability is common among the adults with asthma followed up by pulmonary or allergy specialists. Severity of disease, quantified by an asthma-specific measure, was a strong predictor of disability, but not its only predictor. In particular, working conditions, including physical demands and chemical exposures, appeared to contribute as potent an incremental disability risk, even after taking into account other subject characteristics, including illness severity.
Our findings
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Jonathan Henke for his programming help, Dr. Patricia Katz for her questionnaire input, ana Dr. Charles Gherman of the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan for his assistance.
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Supported by a First Award R29 HL48959 and Research Career Development Award K04 HL03225 (Dr. Blanc), National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md
revision accepted October 12.