Allan Becker; Denis Bérubé; Zave Chad; Myrna Dolovich; Francine Ducharme; Tony D'Urzo;

AbstractBackground: Although guidelines for the diagnosis and manage-ment of asthma have been published over the last 15 years,there has been little focus on issues relating to asthma in child-hood. Since the last revision of the 1999 Canadian asthmaconsensus report, important new studies, particularly in chil-dren, have highlighted the need to incorporate this new infor-mation into asthma guidelines. Objectives: To review the literature on asthma published betweenJanuary 2000 and June 2003 and to evaluate the influence ofnew evidence on the recommendations made in the CanadianAsthma Consensus Report, 1999and its 2001 update with amajor focus on pediatric issues. Methods: Diagnosis of asthma in young children, preventionstrategies, pharmacotherapy, inhalation devices, immunother-apy and asthma education were selected for review by smallexpert resource groups. In June 2003, the reviews were dis-cussed at a meeting under the auspices of the Canadian Net-work For Asthma Care and the Canadian Thoracic Society.Data published up to December 2004 were subsequently re-viewed by the individual expert resource groups.