Using Oasys for patients with few or no days off
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We currently have a grant evaluating asthma as it relates to farm work. Dr. Kenneth Rosenman, MD has evaluated computerized spirometer data from 11 different farm participants and to date there apears to be no work effect. Have you worked with agriculturally employed patients? These individuals have random, and often no days off work, sometimes only partial days off. Any suggestions on how this oasys program will work for us?
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Wasif Anees has evaluated Oasys in a group of grain farmers during harvest, and a group of grain dockers, and have found few days off as you have. This compromises the standard evaluation used in Oasys which compares complexes of periods at and away from work. We have two methods of overcoming this problem, both of which require use of the Oasys day interpreter before evaluation. The simplest is to compare the mean "day interpreted" PEF between days at and away from work. The 95% confidence interval for asymptomatic grain exposed workers is 17 litres/minute or 3.3% predicted. Less evaluated is the area between 2-hourly readings on work and rest days. This requires standardisation for waking time and frequent measurements; the cut off for occupational asthma is around a mean of 7 litres/min/hour for a whole waking time record.
If there are no days off work, it may be possible to compare days with and without a particular exposure of interest. This is much easier with our experimental version of Oasys. I would be pleased to analyse these records for you. I will need to know waking and sleeping times, times starting and stopping work, and periods of exposure to agents in which you are interested.
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