Quality of life
Badly controlled asthma can have an adverse impact on your quality of life. The condition can result in:
- fatigue,
- underperformance or absence from work (in the UK, asthma accounts for at least 12.7 million work days lost each year), and
- psychological problems including stress, anxiety and depression.
If you feel that your asthma is seriously affecting your quality of life, you should contact your GP or asthma clinic. Your personal asthma treatment plan may need to be reviewed in order to better control the condition.
Asthma charities and support groups will also be able to provide help and advice.
Respiratory complications
Asthma can lead to a number of possible serious respiratory complications, including:
- pneumonia (infection of the lungs),
- a collapse of part or all of the lung,
- respiratory failure (a condition where the levels of oxygen in the blood become dangerously low, or the levels of carbon dioxide become dangerously high), and
- status asthmaticus (severe asthma attacks that do not respond to treatment).
All of these complications are life-threatening and will need medical treatment.
Death
In the UK in 2005, over 1300 people died from asthma, and on average one person dies from asthma every seven hours. The risk of dying from asthma increases with age.
In England between 1996 and 2004, there were 16,384 asthma-related deaths in people aged over 65, compared with 239 deaths in children under 15 years of age. Deaths are more common in women than in men, but this could be due to the fact that women tend to live longer.
However, a leading asthma charity has claimed that 90% of these deaths could have been prevented through proper management of the condition.
