The pharmacotherapeutic, epidemiological and economic impact of asthma in Brazilian health units: a narrative review

Abstract

Asthma is a multifactorial disease that affects all ages, especially in the first years of life, impacting health and burdening the Unified Health System (SUS). Medicines for this disease are distributed free of charge by the public service through the Specialized Component of Pharmaceutical Assistance (CEAF). The pharmacist appears in this scope to identify, prevent and solve problems related to the drug. The objective of this work is to highlight the epidemiological and pathophysiological characteristics of asthma, reporting the main treatments and performance of pharmaceutical care. This is a narrative review study using the SciELO, ScienceDirect, PubMed and Google Scholar databases, where the original search of original articles was carried out from 2007 to 2017. Also, a survey was made in the SUS Hospital Information System, regarding the number of hospitalizations and costs about these patients. Asthma is a chronic and inflammatory disease, prevalent in women (50.74%) and the 0-9 age group (52.45%), with the Northeast and North regions having the highest number of deaths. The most commonly used pharmacotherapy for the treatment of asthma is the association of inhaled corticosteroids (IC) with long-acting β2-agonists, mainly represented by formoterol and budesonide. It was possible to verify in this study that the pharmacist, in the asthma scenario, plays an essential role through the pharmacotherapeutic accompaniment contributing to a better quality of life of these patients.