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Asthma Australia has funded a new study led by respiratory paediatrician Prof. Paul Robinson to determine if home-based oscillometry monitoring could help detect oncoming asthma attacks.
Oscillometry (previously known as the Forced Oscillation technique, FOT) is a new type of lung function test that is easy to perform and does not depend on effort, providing information on respiratory system mechanics (e.g., how narrow the airways are and stiff the lungs are).
- It is performed during relaxed inhale and exhale (tidal) breathing and can be done by children from pre-school age and above.
- Oscillometry has exciting potential as a tool used at home with parent supervision to not only monitor asthma severity and control in children, but also help detect or predict asthma flare-ups early on.
Why is this research important?
Only a minority of children with ongoing asthma maintain good asthma control, and poor asthma control is a well-known risk factor for poor asthma outcomes such as asthma attacks and even death.
Monitoring asthma control in kids presents several challenges.
- The current best option for lung function monitoring – peak flow – is hard for children to perform reliably (as it depends on effort) and insensitive to the changes that occur with exacerbations and poor asthma control.
- As a result, doctors rely on reported symptoms, medication diaries and questionnaires, all of which can be affected by how both children and their parents perceive the symptoms and how well they are able to remember them.
- This lack of an objective and sensitive tool limits the ability of parents and doctors to make the right management decisions.
What did the research do?
Researchers led by Prof. Paul Robinson at the University of Queensland followed 55 school-aged children for 3-4 months: 42 children with asthma and 13 healthy controls. Participants performed daily oscillometry at home using a handheld device – a measurement technique that simply requires normal breathing into the device and does not rely on the forceful effort needed for spirometry. The study examined whether changes picked up by oscillometry could identify poorly controlled asthma and predict upcoming attacks.
Key findings
- Home oscillometry was able to detect changes in airway function that signalled poorer asthma control and an increased risk of an attack – often days before symptoms escalated.
- Because oscillometry is effort-independent and sensitive to smaller airways, it may pick up early inflammation or narrowing that spirometry/peak flow can miss.
- The study included children from both regional (29) and urban (26) areas, demonstrating the potential benefit for families who live far from emergency hospital care.
Why this matters
Children are especially vulnerable to rapid worsening of asthma, and many present to hospital without obvious early warning signs. A home monitoring approach that is easy to perform and sensitive to early lung changes could give families and clinicians a valuable window for early intervention – potentially preventing hospitalisations and reducing serious asthma attacks. The study provides promising early proof that oscillometry could become an important part of paediatric asthma management.
What’s next?
The team is scaling up to a larger trial of about 200 children across city and rural settings to assess how many asthma attacks the approach can prevent and to better understand its real-world benefits for families and the health system.
“A lot of kids who come into hospital with a severe asthma attack have had no clear early warning signs that things are about to get worse. We wanted to see if there was a way to track asthma control more objectively and consistently at home.
“The more we can understand about when and why asthma worsens, the better and more quickly we can treat it and prevent attacks before they happen. That’s the goal.” – Prof. Paul Robinson
Read the full media release here.
