Page 145 - Comprehensive treatment of patients with glucocorticoid-dependent severe asthma

expected entries into the study website. Patients were not aware that the data would be retrieved from the devices and cross-checked with the internet data.
2. Health outcomes
Spared dose of oral corticosteroids (main outcome of original trial) was defined as the actual cumulative dose minus the expected cumulative dose of prednisone equivalent used over the 6-months period. The actual cumulative dose was calculated from the doses registered daily on the website, and the expected cumulative dose was extrapolated from the daily dose at study entry [6].
3. Costs
Health care costs were deduced from health care events. Patients reported their use of health care resources by completing a Burden of Asthma questionnaire [27] at baseline, and at 3 and 6 months of the study. Health care events included scheduled and unscheduled contacts (face-to-face, telephone and home visits) with health care professionals (general practitioners, chest physician and asthma nurses). Events related to severe asthma exacerbations or co-morbidities included emergency room visits and hospital admissions. We used Dutch standard prices in Euros for units of resource use. All prices were converted to the price level of 2009 according to the general Dutch consumer price index [28].
Reliability of the data
For the evaluation of reliability, the self-reported FeNO values were compared with the values in the FeNO-analyzer memory card and were considered as correct values if they were identical on the same day. Other parameters checked were self-invented values (self-reported FeNO values without a correspondent value in the memory card on the same day) and forgotten data (FeNO values in the memory card but no correspondent value in the study website on the same day) [29]. A possible time trend in the adherence and reliability scores was also investigated by comparing the three study periods (first 2 months, months 3 and 4, months 5 and 6).
Adherence to telemanagement
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