Asthma Assessment Tools - Is your patients asthma controlled? 

 - Asthma Control Test (ACT) 

 - GINA Symptom Control Assessment 



As with many conditions, a primary starting point is to assess the level of control. For asthma we have a variety of tools/methods of determining if a patients asthma is controlled. The first is the ACT, which is a 5 question survey. If the patients answers results in a score of 19 or less, this indicates its uncontrolled. The GINA 2019 guidelines recommend asking these 4 listed questions, and how many the patient answers "yes" to will determine if their asthma is uncontrolled. The last method is more of a rule-of-thumb but is a great screening tool from the pharmacy perspective. If a patient receives more than 2 rescue inhalers per year, their asthma is uncontrolled. This is because a normal albuterol inhaler carries 200 puffs, so if patients are using 2 full inhalers per year, the frequency in which they are using it indicates uncontrolled asthma.



Jarred Prudencio, PharmD - https://www.instagram.com/ambcarerx



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