A Support Network to Cope with Severe Asthma in Alicante

“You feel like you're running out of air and can only breathe through a straw.” This is how Alicia González-Nicolás graphically explains the effects of severe asthma; a type that does not respond to usual treatments due to its complexity and comorbidities, affecting nearly 10% of the entire asthmatic population. This Alicante native has embraced the principle of an empowered patient and presides over the Association of Patients with Asthma - Severe Asthma Group of Alicante (ASAPA GAGA), the first of its kind in the entire Community.

What started as a WhatsApp group where three severe asthma patients shared experiences about the terrible and limiting effects of this condition has now become a support network with dozens of affected individuals. The association offers workshops, therapies, informative sessions, and even advice on what types of products to avoid to prevent a severe asthma attack.

This educational task also targets people in the patients' environment, as well as the general population, so they know how to act if they witness a severe asthma attack. “Generally, people know how to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), but few would know how to assist an asthmatic during a crisis,” explains the president of ASAPA GAGA.

Alicia assures that the physiological effects of asthma intertwine with psychological ones, as the sensation of not being able to breathe generates anxiety in many patients. “There are people who think 'I won't make it out of this' during a crisis. Many also self-limit in their daily lives; they refrain from exercising due to the feeling of suffocation or barely go outside for fear that something might trigger an attack.”

In Alicia's case, she has suffered from allergic asthma since she was 6 years old, and it wasn't until adulthood that her condition became severe, forcing her into continuous hospital admissions. Chest pressure, shortness of breath, or wheezing (the whistling sound produced by respiratory problems) are life companions for her and many other asthmatic patients (between 5% and 10% of our country's population).

For all these individuals, the inhaler is an everyday item - Alicia carries up to three in her bag daily - which they must use during an attack. These devices contain medication atomized into small droplets that allow easier access to the bronchi and lungs. However, severe asthma is characterized by not always responding favorably to medication, necessitating hospital admission.

Psychological intervention also plays a role here, an area where Alicante's Doctor Balmis General Hospital has been recognized by the medical community. So much so that the severe bronchial asthma unit at this Alicante center received the First Prize for Best Practices in Quality Care at the 57th National Congress of the Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) for their project 'Psychological Intervention in Severe Asthma: From Theory to Practice'.

Thanks to collaboration with the Alicante Institute for Health and Biomedical Research (ISABIAL), this unit has had a psychologist integrated into their multidisciplinary team for five years. Thus, psychologist María José Zamora carries out psychotherapeutic interventions offered to all patients as a complement to medical treatment.