THE ROLE OF MEDICAL HISTORY TAKING FOR OCCUPATIONAL ASTHMA DIAGNOSIS
To establish the diagnosis of a disease including asthma, physician always taking medical history from patient, physical examination, laboratory tests, imaging or other examination. In occupational asthma, taking appropriate medical history is very important to measure the relationship between exposure and disease. Crucial elements are the occurrence of a symptom-free latency period, an improvement of symptoms when away from work, and to some extent a well-known at-risk occupation. It is essential that the causal relationship between work and symptoms be documented by objective means. However, the clinical history alone is generally not sufficient to make a definitive diagnosis of occupational asthma. The problems are some tests is not so easy to perform, it is time-consuming and costly, and it carries some risk for the patient (and the operator) and should only be done in specialized centers. If only medical history taking performed to establish diagnosis the sensitivity is approximately 70%.
medical history taking, diagnosis, occupational asthma