The asthma consensus in the light of the Delphi method.

The Delphi method is a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. On the assumption that group judgments are more valid than individual judgments the experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the expert’s forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. The initial contributions from the experts are collected in the form of answers to questionnaires and their comments to these answers. The panel director controls the interactions among the participants by processing the information and filtering out irrelevant content. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the ‘‘correct’’ answer and, at the same time, it avoids the negative effects of face-to-face panel discussions and solves the usual problems of group dynamics. In this issue of Allergologia et Inmunopathologia we can see an application of the method to two different documents related to paediatric asthma: The Consensus Document on the Management of Childhood Asthma and the 2009 Spanish Guideline on the Management of Asthma (GEMA 2009). We would like to stress some aspects of these two documents.