ReviewArchives of disease in childhood2003
Usefulness of monitoring lung function in asthma.
Review in Archives of disease in childhood, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- Asthma Symptom Self-Monitoring Methods for Children and Adolescents: Present and Future.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- eHealth Technologies for Monitoring Pediatric Asthma at Home: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Is spirometry essential in diagnosing asthma? Yes.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2016Article
- Monitoring asthma in childhood: lung function, bronchial responsiveness and inflammation.European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2015Review
- Will symptom-based therapy be effective for treating asthma in children?Current allergy and asthma reports · 2013Review
- Management of severe asthma in children.Lancet (London, England) · 2010Review
- Reliability and validity of childhood asthma control test in a population of Chinese asthmatic children.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2008Article
- The need for standardisation of peak flow charts.Thorax · 2005Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There is no firm evidence from randomised controlled trials that routine monitoring of lung function improves asthma control in children. Guidelines for management of asthma consistently recommend routine home monitoring of peak expiratory flow (PEF) in each patient. However, changes in PEF poorly reflect changes in asthma activity, PEF diaries are kept very unreliably, and self management programmes including PEF monitoring are no more effective than programmes solely based on education and symptom monitoring. PEF diaries may still be useful in isolated cases of diagnostic uncertainty, in the identification of exacerbating factors, and in the rare case of children perceiving airways obstruction poorly and exacerbating frequently and severely. If a reliable assessment of airways obstruction in asthma is needed, forced expiratory flow-volume curves are the preferred method. Monitoring of hyperresponsiveness and nitric oxide cannot be recommended for routine use at present. Clinical judgement and expiratory flow-volume loops remain the cornerstone of monitoring asthma in secondary care.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.