Effect of symptoms expression difficulty and excessive physical perception on asthma control test results

Introduction and Objective: Asthma is a chronic disease that airway inflammation is persistent, even if the symptoms are episodic. Asthma control test is a subjective test consisting of 5 questions, based on the patient9s self-reported respiratory symptoms. In this study, the relationship between asthma control, quality of life, body sensation and symptom expression adequacy was investigated in asthmatic patients. Method: ACT, SF-36 Quality of Life Scale, The Body Sensations Questionnaire (BSQ) and The Toronto Alexithymia Scale(TAS) were applied to the patients who were followed-up with the diagnosis of asthma. The scales were applied to each patient once and the relationship between each other was investigated. The BSQ is measures patients excessive perception of fear and symptoms. The TAS is a 20 item instrument that is one of the most commonly used measures of alexithymia. Alexithymia refers to people who have trouble identifying and describing emotions ; SF-36 was used to evaluate the quality of life. Results: 60 patients were included in the study. There was a significant relationship between ACT scoring and SF-36 quality of life scoring. The scales were calculated with pearson correlation coefficients. There was an inverse ratio between BSQ and ACT (p:0.011,r:-0.327). There was no significant correlation between ACT and TAS-20 (p:0,146, r:-0,190). Correlation table of ACT and BSQ with SF-36 is significant correlation was found. This shows us that the deterioration in the quality of life will cause an increase in symptoms and fears. It is thought that exaggerated symptoms will decrease the ACT scores and cause more drug use. However, more studies are needed on this subject.