Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research

SABA Reliance Questionnaire (SRQ) assesses patients’ perceptions of SABA, and whether they may be at risk of SABA overreliance

Research outlines the potential of a SABA Reliance Questionnaire (SRQ).

Poor asthma control and increased risk of asthma attacks are associated with patients relying too heavily on SABA (short-acting beta2 agonists) reliever inhalers and the parallel underuse of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS).

Identifying patients who are at risk of overusing SABA is the first step in tackling this issue.

Research published earlier this year in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice (JACI) outlines the potential of a SABA Reliance Questionnaire (SRQ). This questionnaire assesses how patients perceive their SABA, and identifies the beliefs that may be putting them at risk of SABA overreliance.

Pragmatic Tool

The SRQ, developed in collaboration with the International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG), has been developed from the well-validated Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ) which assesses how patients perceive how important and necessary SABA reliever inhalers are in the management of their asthma.

The SRQ can be used as a tool to identify patients who believe that their asthma is best managed by SABA alone. It can also identify patients who would benefit from an asthma medication review.

The short 5-item questionnaire can uncover why patients may be using SABA in the way they do. With this data, clinicians and patients can discuss how to change behaviour to improve asthma management.

Future uses

Alongside other tools used during asthma consultations, this questionnaire can help health care professionals identify patients who are overusing SABA and their reasons why. With interventions which are individualised to the patient’s beliefs about SABA, this questionnaire could help efforts in reducing inappropriate use of mediation and improve asthma management.

Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research member, Professor Rob Horne who led the development of the SRQ said:

'The SRQ provides a quick and simple tool for identifying patients’ beliefs about SABA that are likely to lead to overreliance. It can be applied in practice to identify patients who are a priority for review of their asthma treatment. To this end, working with IPCRG, we have incorporated the SRQ into a self-completion tool - the reliever reliance test (RRT). The RRT helps patients reflect on their views about SABA, and encourages them to seek appropriate review with their healthcare professional. Further work is needed to test the SRQ and RRT in practice but the early findings reported in JACI are encouraging.' 

Read the article

Read the article in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice

Cite as

Chan, A.H.Y., Katzer, C.B., Horne, R., Haughney, J., Correia de Sousa, J., Williams, S., and Kaplan, A., SABA Reliance Questionnaire (SRQ): Identifying Patient Beliefs Underpinning Reliever Overreliance in Asthma. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. In press (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaip.2020.07.014