Researchers from the Pneumology group, led by Dr. Ferran Morell, at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR) have coordinated a multicenter study which demonstrated that two five-minute sessions on asthma and its treatment, carried out in the pneumologist’s consultation room, reduced the visits to hospital emergency rooms among the asthma patients who received the educational interventions. In the study participated nearly 500 asthma patients from Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, the Primary Care Center Sant Rafael in Barcelona, the Hospital Clínico Universitario de Salamanca, the Hospital de Galdakao, the Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla and the Hospital Universitario Insular de Gran Canaria. After adjusting treatment according to Global Initiative for Asthma guidelines (GINA), doctors explained in five minutes to half of the participants in the study the inflammatory process of the bronchial tube that causes the disease, and how they have to detect and act when the symptoms of asthma attack do appear. For this educational intervention doctors explained the contents of the Diaryflow booklet, which was delivered to the patients and is an informative publication for asthma patients, issued by the "http://www.socapnet.org/" Catalan Society of Pneumology (Fundació Catalana de Pneumologia), that includes the description of the disease, the treatment, how to react to the relapses and which substances must be avoided. The same protocol was repeated three months later and eventually, at 6 months all the patients received the training. The results proved that the group of patients who received the educational interventions required fewer urgent visits to hospital emergency rooms and were less often absent from work than the patients who didn’t received the interventions. For Dr. Morell, the study demonstrated that “education, a written self-monitoring and self-management plan leads to better asthma control in affected patients”. In that sense, he reports that “it is a great opportunity to give better care to asthma patients, to reduce the risk of exacerbations, as well as to reduce the public spending in hospital admissions caused by a lack of adherence to the treatment prescribed”. According to a "https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3-GelWPMn4dVEFOLVNyS2dSd0E/edit?pli=1" study published today by the Spanish Society of Pneumology (SEPAR), coinciding with the World Asthma Day, the Spanish government allocates 1,480 million euros to this disease. Nonetheless, the 70% of these resources are spent due to a bad control of the disease. The entity estimates that 300 million people suffer asthma all around the world, and it affects between the 5% and 8% of the adult population in Spain, and between the 8% and 12% of children. The study led by Dr. Morell, in which also participated in Catalonia Dr. Teresa Genover from the CAP Sant Rafael, was published in the April issue of the journal " "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23932566" Medicina Clínica, and the booklet, that are currently using Vall d’Hebron pneumologists, is available in the Catalan Society of Pneumology "mailto:fucapneumo@gmail.com" (fucapneumo@gmail.com).