Sastre J, Del Cuvillo A, Colás C, et al.
Allergy. 2020 May 25. doi: 10.1111/all.14415. Online ahead of print.
A mobile application (MASK-air®) has demonstrated usefulness in assessing patient behaviour in allergic rhinitis. This app measures general, nasal, ocular and asthma symptoms with a visual scale and daily medication intake.
The objective of this study was to validate the app for allergic rhinitis, comparing it to a written questionnaire for a month.
A total of 252 participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: participants with allergic rhinitis who used the Spanish version of the app on a daily basis and participants with allergic rhinitis who were asked to use the questionnaire at days 1, 3, 7, 14, 21 and 28 and at a final visit one week later.
The usefulness of the allergic rhinitis app was evaluated at baseline and at the end using the Rhinitis Control Assessment Tool questionnaire. Other allergic rhinitis outcomes included treatment adherence, reflective total nasal symptom score, ocular symptom score, the modified ARIA severity classification, a quality-of-life questionnaire and daily visual analogue scales for nasal, conjunctival, asthma, and global for overall allergy symptoms, and the asthma control test for asthmatic patients at baseline and at end of study. Participants and specialists’ satisfaction with the app were evaluated using a Likert scale.
Most participants in the app group (90 %) had downloaded it to their smartphone and 92 % of them used it. Most users (88 %) reported being satisfied or very satisfied with the app, with 72% of the specialists reporting that their patients were satisfied.
At the end of the study, a relevant improvement on the Rhinitis Control Assessment Tool score was observed, but with no significant or clinically relevant difference between groups. Other outcomes were not different between study groups either.
This study demonstrated that the app contributed to the improvement of allergic rhinitis as effectively as the written questionnaire. It has shown that the MASK-air® app is practical ad useful.
