Factors of disability due to asthma in Ukraine

In recent decades, the world has made significant progress in asthma treatment. However, the number of people with severe disabling asthma in Ukraine is 0.3-0.4 per 10,000 working population with no tendency to decrease. <bold>Aim:</bold> to analyze the factors that lead to disability due to asthma in Ukraine. We analyzed the documentation of 105 disabled asthma patients, 74.6% female, with an average age of 46±2 years and an average postFEV1 of 54,2±1,8. We performed the factor analysis to assess the factors influencing disability the most. Among disabled asthma patients, there is a predominance of young women with moderate and severe asthma, uncontrolled and partially controlled asthma, concomitant cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic disorders (more than 60%). Overall, more than 88% of patients had not fully controlled asthma despite using basic therapy. The disability due to asthma was most significantly affected by the issues with medical and rehabilitation care for patients (cumulative contribution of 40.1%). This needs to be more compliant with the standards of diagnosis and treatment, late diagnosis of the disease, and inadequate treatment of exacerbations. This could be explained by the war state, which leads to inaccessibility to medical care. The second place was the underestimation of the asthma severity, concomitant COPD, and defects of the treatment of concomitant cardiovascular pathology (38.5%). The insufficient motivation of the person for treatment (29.5%) was also important – the lack of pulmonary rehabilitation programs, smoking, as well as hazardous working conditions (28.2%). Therefore, to reduce the disability due to asthma, it is necessary to focus on reducing the role of the above-mentioned factors.