Level of Asthma Controller Therapy Before Admission to the Hospital

BACKGROUND: In asthma, choice of controller therapy and adherence to treatment can affect the risk of future severe exacerbations leading to hospitalization. OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to characterize treatment dispensation profiles before hospital admission for asthma. METHODS: Using a 1/97th random sample of the national French claims data, patients with asthma aged 6 to 40 years were identified between 2006 and 2014. Patients with subsequent asthma-related hospitalization were selected. On the basis of controller therapy dispensed in the 12 months before admission, treatment profiles were categorized into clusters, using Ward's minimum-variance hierarchical clustering method. RESULTS: Of 17,846 patients with asthma, we identified 275 patients (1.5%) with an asthma-related hospitalization. Three distinct clusters were identified. The first cluster (63.6%) included patients with few dispensations of any controller medication (