OBJECTIVE: Patients with asthma consume significant amounts of health care resources. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in resource use for patients with different degrees of severity of asthma. METHODS: The data are drawn from the Adelphi Disease Specific Programme (DSP) in Asthma, undertaken in 2003. DSPs are cross-sectional studies of consulting patients. One of the aims of the DSP was to collect information about the treatment of asthma from the perspective of both the doctor and the patient. Data were collected by a panel of doctors who were asked to include the first 10 patients consulting for asthma from a specified start date. The study included 2610 patients with asthma of greater than 12 months duration in France, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain. RESULTS: Patients were segmented by their doctor into one of four categories: intermittent (28%), mild persistent (15%), moderate persistent (49%) and severe persistent (8%). Patients with intermittent asthma had a mean of 0.37 emergency room visits, 0.06 hospitalisations and 2.3 physician visits specifically for the treatment of asthma exacerbations in the last 12 months. Patients in other groups consumed more resources. Patients with mild persistent asthma had 0.57 emergency room visits, 0.09 hospitalisations and 3.1 physician visits. The means for moderate patients were 0.61, 0.25 and 3.66 respectively, and for severe patients 1.22, 1.98 and 6.22. Patients in Germany and France were most likely to seek primary care treatment; though patients in Italy and the UK were most likely to be hospitalised. CONCLUSION: The data show that the likelihood of resource use of patients with exacerbations of asthma increases with the underlying level of severity. From these data, it is clear that better control and management of asthma exacerbations can result in resource use savings.