Consensus on asthma treatment in Paediatrics

FOREWORD When the Spanish Society of Clinical Immunology and Paediatric Allergy and the Spanish Society of Paediatric Pneumology agreed to organise a joint meeting in May 2004, they set up a commission to draw up a document that would review the basic features of children’s asthma treatment and would unify criteria that had been apparently diverse up to then. The first meeting of this Commission was held in June 2003 and laid down the guiding principles for this document. Special attention would be paid to those periods of life in which asthma is more complicated for both diagnosis and treatment. The prediction of the asthma phenotype, as a variable to be borne in mind in certain therapy decisions, was included for the first time in a guide of this kind. The document was not conceived as an exhaustive guide. Consequently, such basic questions as education and self-care were not dealt with because there is general consensus on them. The most important aspect of the document is the bringing together of two hitherto disparate visions of children’s asthma. Both societies assume full responsibility for the document, in which every sentence has been checked carefully. The basic aim is to offer clear, uniform criteria for asthma treatment in Paediatrics. Both Societies hope that this is not the end of our joint work, but that it will continue on a regular basis with other initiatives, including the updating of this document in the future.