The impact of group based asthma education programmes on unscheduled healthcare utilisation: A systematic review.

<bold>Objective:</bold> The benefts of asthma self-managment education has been well studied. Asthma exacerbations are often seen as failings in asthma care delivery. The objective of this review is to assess the impact that group-based asthma education programmes have on unscheduled healthcare utilisation. <bold>Methods:</bold> A systematic search was performed in CINAHL Complete, MEDLINE, Embase and Web of Science. A comprehensive search was undertaken for each of the key concepts of asthma education, unscheduled healthcare utilisation and quantitative studies. The PICOS framework was used to identify suitable studies for inclusion. No limitations were placed on the search strategy. Only Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT's) were included in the review. Study quality of RCT's that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were assessed using the Cochrance Risk of Bias tool 2. A purposely designed data extraction tool was used to extract relevent data from the included studies. Review Manager 5.4 was used for the meta-analysis of extracted data. <bold>Results:</bold> 5 studies involving 537 patients were included. Results revealed that group-based asthma education programmes significantly reduced unscheduled General Practitioner (GP) visits (p=0.004) and unscheduled doctors visits (p=0.03), although unscheduled doctors visits were not clearly defined in the research papers. Pooled data revelaed mixed results in realtion to Emergency department attendances and Hospital admissions. <bold>Conclusion:</bold> There is a paucity of of good quality data on this subject. There is a need for more rigorous studies due to the limitations in the quantity and quality of research papers included in this review.