A survey of physicians, biomedical researchers and college-educated adults in urban north India about inhaled therapies.

Abstract

We surveyed 15 persons with a medical qualification, 133 graduate students doing biomedical research and 56 students or working people with a college education in any discipline. Questions were designed to gauge awareness about inhaled therapies for tuberculosis (TB), non-tubercular mycobacterial lung disease (NTM-LD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Respondents from six cities in North India, aged between 21 and 57 years answered 20 questions. All physicians, 99.25 % of graduate students and 85.71 % of the rest were aware and positive about inhalations for asthma, but these proportions fell to 69.92 and 66.07 in respect of other diseases. All respondents in the first two categories agreed that it was easy to train patients in the use of inhalation devices, while the third group was unanimous that there would be no aversion to using inhalation devices. A question asking whether the respondent would prescribe or opt for inhaled therapies for own use elicited an affirmative answer only from 40.00 % of physicians, 43.61 % of researchers and 23.21 % of college-educated persons (overall: 37.56 %). We concluded that inhaled therapies for diseases other than asthma are not well known and find limited acceptance among the populations sampled.