ABSTRACT
For asthma, as with most chronic diseases, the goal of treatment is to control the disease process itself. There are many classifi cation systems for asthma control, however currently no one system has been universally adopted. Asthma control can be split into two distinct categories (Reddel et al. 2009): current clinical control (including the avoidance of asthma symptoms, minimizing reliever use, allowing normal levels of activity and achieving normal lung function tests) and future prevention (which includes prevention of asthma exacerbations and the maintenance of normal lung function tests in the absence of drug side-effects).
