Investigating the Possibility to Individualize Asthma Attack Therapy Based on Attack Severity and Patient Characteristics

Introduction: The objective of this study was to investigate with the help of a computerized simulation model whether the treatment of an acute asthma attack can be individualized based on the severity of the attack and the characteristics of the patient.
Material and Method: A stochastic lung model was used to simulate the deposition of 1 nm – 10 µm particles during a mild and a moderate asthma attack. Breathing parameters were varied to maximize deposition, and simulation results were compared with those obtained in the case of a severe asthma attack. In order to investigate the effect of height on the deposition of inhaled particles, another series of simulations was carried out with identical breathing parameters, comparing patient heights of 155 cm, 175 cm and 195 cm.
Results: The optimization process yielded an increase in the maximum deposition values of around 6–7% for each type of investigated asthma attack, and the difference between attacks of different degree of severity was around 5% for both the initial and the optimized values, a higher degree of obstruction increasing the amount of deposited particles.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that the individualization of asthma attack treatment cannot be based on particles of different size, as the highest deposited fraction in all three types of attacks can be obtained using 0.01 µm particles. The use of a specific set of breathing parameters yields a difference between a mild and a moderate, as well as a moderate and a severe asthma attack of around 5%.