Asthma Exacerbations
In the year prior to the procedure, patients in the TA-B-BAL group received an average (standard deviation) of 4.17 (4.22) oral steroid courses, attended 5.88 (5.10) emergency department visits, and experienced 5.46 (5.32) asthma wheezing exacerbations. At the post-operative visit, the average number of required oral steroid courses decreased to 1.21 (1.31), the average number of emergency department visits to 1.15 (1.34) and the average number of wheezing exacerbations to 1.77 (1.79).
In the year prior to the first assessment in the asthma clinic, patients in the control group received an average (standard deviation) of 3.47 (2.79) oral steroid courses, attended 3.42 (3.00) emergency department visits, and experienced 3.58 (2.47) asthma wheezing exacerbations. Patients in the control group also demonstrated an improvement with standard asthma treatment. At a time interval matched with the post-operative visit, the mean number of oral corticosteroid courses was 1.89 (2.40), the mean number of emergency department visits was 2.11 (2.85), and the mean number of exacerbations was 1.71 (1.59).
A Poisson mixed effects regression analysis revealed that TA-B-BAL was associated with a 61%reduced risk of oral corticosteroid use (RR 0.39, 95% CI 0.18, 0.83, p=0.014), 64% reduction in emergency department visits (RR 0.36, 95% CI 0.17, 0.75, p=0.007) and 42% reduction in the risk of exacerbations (RR 0.58, 95% CI 0.28, 1.20, p=0.14) compared to standard asthma care.