ABSTRACT
The economic impact of exacerbations is significant; expenditure for asthma costs over $9.4 billion in the USA and £2.3 billion in the UK per annum1 and has been outlined in Chapter 3. Over half of this relates to treatment of acute exacerbations. Furthermore, in the UK for example, over 12.7 million working days are lost in adults (with a loss of productivity amounting to £1.2 billion) and school absenteeism is estimated at approximately 8.5 million school days per annum. The economic burden of exacerbations in children is more difficult to estimate but is also likely to be significant due to associated costs such as parental absenteeism from work to care for asthmatic children at home.
