Dynamics of psychological status of bronchial asthma patients at secondary prevention time

Abstract

The aim: the evaluation of psychological status changings in bronchial asthma (BA) patients against the background of basic therapy (ВТ) and their teaching at an asthma-school (AS). One hundred and seventy nine asthmatic patients were observed for 3 years: 51 of them (the 1^st group) had the 2^nd stage of the disease, 91 ones (the 2^nd group) had the 3rd stage and 27 patients (the 3rd group) were with the 4^th BA stage. Flunisolid in doses from 500 to 1500 meg daily was used as the ВТ. Clinical symptoms (CS), lung function parameters (LFP) and psychological status of the patients were monitored using the PQBI test (the personal questionnaire of the Bekhterev Institute). The dynamics of harmonic (H), neurotic (N) and other pathological types was analysed. Initially the H reacting type was registrated in 49.2% of all the asthmatic patients. One hundred and seven patients were taught at the traditional AS, 46 patients were educated with the traditional AS programme combined with the group psychotherapy and 26 patients formed the control group. While both of the educational programmes were applying, CS and LFP were improved, H-type patients’ number increased (p<0.001) and those of N-type reduced (p<0.001). Nevertheless, the combination of educational programmes and psychotherapeutic methods allows to diminish N-type patients’ amount due to the reliable increase of H-type patients’ group (p<0.001) compared with the traditional AS.