Economic Impact of Asthma on Healthcare Systems
Summary
Asthma imposes significant direct and indirect costs on healthcare systems worldwide. Direct medical expenditures encompass hospitalisation, outpatient care, diagnostic procedures and pharmacotherapy, while indirect costs arise from lost productivity due to work or school absence. Over the past decade, rising asthma prevalence, ageing populations and evolving treatment paradigms—particularly the expanded use of combination inhalers and biologics—have reshaped expenditure profiles. Medication costs increasingly dominate budgets, even as enhanced self-management programmes and adherence initiatives contribute to reductions in emergency visits and hospital admissions in certain regions. Nevertheless, disparities persist across socioeconomic strata and geographies, driven by variations in healthcare access and disease severity. Frequent reliance on short-acting beta-agonists often signals suboptimal control and correlates with higher resource utilisation. Policy interventions that promote early diagnosis, patient education and guideline-based management have demonstrated potential for cost containment. A comprehensive understanding of these economic dynamics is essential for optimising resource allocation and designing sustainable asthma care frameworks at both local and national levels.
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Economic Impact of Asthma on Healthcare Systems publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in economic impact of asthma on healthcare systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Direct medical costs: Expenditures for diagnostic tests, hospitalisation, physician visits and medications.
Indirect costs: Economic losses from work or school absence and reduced productivity.
Short-acting beta-agonist (SABA): Bronchodilator providing rapid symptomatic relief in asthma.
Exacerbation: Acute worsening of asthma symptoms requiring additional treatment.
Prevalence-based cost-of-illness model: Method estimating total economic burden by applying per-patient costs to disease prevalence.
References
- The economic burden of asthma prior to death: a nationwide descriptive study. Frontiers in Public Health (2024).
- Direct and Indirect Costs of Asthma Management in Greece: An Expert Panel Approach. Frontiers in Public Health (2017).
- The economic burden of medical treatment of children with asthma in China. BMC Pediatrics (2020).
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