Work-related asthma, which can be lethal, has been connected with poorer asthma management and more unplanned trips to health centers. Case reports of asthma fatality at the workplace are rare, however steps may be made to prevent further cases. The study investigated relevant literature and data sources to analyse the likely sources of exposures contributing to occupational asthma by the analysis of mortality data at population level. There have been a limited number of population studies dealing with asthma mortality connected to the workforce. Asthma mortality data are derived from death certificates used as a standard for the coding purpose of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). However, there is no separate code for work-related asthma. In an asthma-mortality analysis, high risk positions that were not found by analysis of asthma-mortality data seem to be identified.

In addition to reported work-related deaths of asthma, occupational exposures could have led to other unreported deaths and might potentially be found in the context of population-level study of mortality data. Such analyses seem to help recognise high-risk vocations and sectors in the United States. If a work related asthma ICD code is available, further analyses would be possible.

Reference: https://journals.lww.com/co-allergy/Abstract/2019/04000/Use_of_population_data_for_assessing_trends_in.5.aspx

Author