• Maria A Tosca, Michela Silvestri, Roberta Olcese, Angela Pistorio, Giovanni A Rossi, and Giorgio Ciprandi.
• Pediatric Pulmonology and Allergy Unit, Istituto Giannina Gaslini, Genoa, Italy.
• Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2012 Sep 1; 23 (6): 537-42.

BackgroundIn children with asthma, discrepancies between objective indicators of airway obstruction and symptom perception are often observed. Although visual analogue scale (VAS) has been proposed as a useful tool for assessing accurate symptom perception, previous studies conducted in children with asthma included only small cohorts. A study was therefore designed to investigate the usefulness of VAS in establishing a reliable relationship between breathlessness perception and lung function in a large cohort of children with clinical diagnosis of asthma.MethodsA total of 703 children [470 boys and 233 girls, median age 10.29 (8.33-12.58) yr] with asthma were included in this cross-sectional, real-life study. Perception of breathlessness was assessed by using VAS, and lung volumes and expiratory flows were measured by spirometry.ResultsMost children had intermittent or mild persistent asthma (93.3%), and only 46 children had a significant bronchial obstruction defined by FEV(1) values <80% of predicted. Globally, VAS was significantly, even though weakly, related to lung function. Analyzing children with bronchial obstruction, a moderate relationship between both FEV(1) (r = 0.47) and FEF(25-75) (r = 0.42) and VAS was detected. A VAS value of 6 was found to be a reliable cutoff for discriminating children with bronchial obstruction (AUC 0.83 at ROC curve; OR 9.4).ConclusionThe present study demonstrates that VAS might be considered a useful tool to assess symptom perception, mainly in children with airflow limitation.© 2012 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

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