Table of Contents
Management of Asthma Treatment
The 20" Intemational Conference of System Dynamics Society
July 28 - August 1, 2002.
By
Ali N. Mashayekhi
Professor of Management
Graduate School of Management
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
In treatment of many diseases, there is a tendency to rely on short-term treatment.
Short-term treatment provides relieves for the patient from suffering and is seek by those
who are under pain. However, such a short-term treatment has some long-term
consequences and makes the long-term treatment much more difficult. In addition,
continuous use of short-term treatment creates habit and addiction for the patient in many
diseases. Such addiction makes it difficult for the patient to avoid short-term treatment.
These dynamics are common for many diseases including asthma. In this paper a model
is presented to that captures the dynamic of asthma treatment. The model is used to
examine different treatment strategy and their impacts on the patients in terms of
suffering and the control and the essential treatment of the disease. The model can be
used to help the management of asthma treatment by both patients and physicians.
