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closePotential for bias in asthma overdiagnosis?
Posted by Frankbaeyens on 10 Mar 2016 at 00:54 GMT
"Asthma as an outcome was based on student?s self-reported doctor?s diagnoses of asthma." How about the possibility of overdiagnosis of asthma being more likely if gp's know that patients vape or smoke, as an alternative account of the main findings? See for example ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26917656 on problem of asthma overdiagnosis: "Overdiagnosis of childhood asthma is common in primary care, leading to unnecessary treatment, disease burden, and impact on quality of life. However, only in a small percentage of children is a diagnosis of asthma confirmed by lung function tests."
RE: Potential for bias in asthma overdiagnosis?
cjhjunho replied to Frankbaeyens on 01 Apr 2016 at 05:04 GMT
Thanks for the comment. I understand the over-diagnosis of asthma is a hot issue among general practitioners. When the UK newspaper “The Telegraph” reported the article on over-diagnosis of asthma as a news headline, it received more than 100 comments. I understand it is not easy to diagnose asthma accurately. As Dan Murphy, Director of External Affairs at Asthma UK, stated in the article: “Asthma has many complex causes which is why it is very difficult to get a definitive diagnosis”. Thus, potential over-diagnosis or under-diagnosis is a limitation of any study that examines the causes of asthma, including our paper which used the Korean CDC data. It should be noted, however, that the paper you referenced suggests that overdiagnosis was often based on case history of breathing problems, wheezing and coughs rather than any clinical tests. There’s no evidence to suggest that any of the overdiagnoses would have been due to a doctor’s knowledge of the patient’s vaping or smoking habits.