Wheezing, dyspnea, coughing, and breathing problems are all symptoms of asthma, which is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways that causes broad airway obstruction. Asthma affects roughly the entire population of Portugal. There are various manifestations (phenotypes) of this disorder, each with its own clinical characteristics, such as comorbidities, severity, response to treatment, and frequency of acute exacerbations. The primary goal of managing asthma is to control it, and since the degradation of patients' quality of life is increasingly recognized as a serious outcome in therapeutic trials, it should be regularly assessed using validated questionnaires. Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), occasionally in larger doses and combined with long-acting beta-agonists (LABA) or other treatments, are typically used to treat patients with mild to moderate asthma. If oral corticosteroids (OCS), which are equivalent to prednisone or another steroid, are required for short periods of time during a flare-up in which people receiving treatment do not react to a four-fold increase in their baseline ICS dose, they may be utilized.
