OBJECTIVES: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airway and the prevalence rate is increasing. As the burden of asthma to the society is significant due to the increasing hospital admissions and emergency visits, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI, USA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have developed comprehensive guidelines to help clinicians and patients make appropriate decisions about asthma care. The aim of study was to analyze the pattern of asthma prescriptions based on the national asthma guidelines for the patients visiting primary health care providers. METHODS: Prescription data for asthma were obtained from the Korean National Health Insurance claims database of January 2002. Ten percent of the primary health care providers were sampled based on their specialty areas, and 20% of the claim cases were randomly chosen. RESULTS: Study results showed that prescription rate for oral beta-2 agonists was 44.3%, and that for oral theophylline was 46.9%. Oral steroids were prescribed for the 28.2% of the claims. Utilization of inhalers was low for both bronchodilators (20.3%, inhaled beta-2 agonists), and steroids (8.4% inhaled steroids). Bronchodilators were more preferred to the long-term anti-inflammatory controllers among the primary health care providers. Prescription rate for antibiotics was 46.0% for asthmatic patients. Also gastrointestinal drugs were prescribed for 59.0%, antitussives 65.3%, antihistamines 25.3% and analgesics 29.4% respectively. CONCLUSION: This study presented that the prescribing pattern of the primary health care providers for the asthma was quite different from the national and international guidelines. More efforts need to be made to reduce the gap between the present pattern of asthma prescription and the guidelines.