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When your chest feels tight and a faint wheezing sound emanates from your body, your first instinct is to grab your blue asthma inhaler for instant relief.
This may have been the case for decades; however, with the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) recently overturning decades of asthma care, everyone needs to start relooking how they manage an illness that affects more than 339 million adults and children worldwide. The GINA group has confirmed that they no longer are recommending the familiar SABA blue reliever inhalers alone as the preferred reliever therapy.
Professional Michelle Wong, head of Pulmonology at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and Dr Angelette Paulsen, a general practitioner, recently sat down with Dr Michael Mol to discuss asthma treatment during a webinar hosted by AstraZeneca.
"It's human nurture; patients want to get quick relief, so many asthmatics tend to ignore the anti-inflammatory medication because they don't feel anything when they take it. Whereas when they take the reliever, the bronchospasm is reduced. All too often, when patients start having symptoms, they use their blue inhaler and rely on that and don't deal with the inflammation which just gets worse," said Wong.
Wong agrees with GINA's new recommendations of using a low dose inhaled corticosteroid (ICS)-formoterol therapy as the preferred reliever therapy across all asthma severities, saying, "Whenever you need to use your reliever, you need to take the anti-inflammatory as well. Patients have two options: they can either use an inhaler with both drugs together or use them separately."
"In the past, we used to say yes, your patient needs to be on an inhaled steroid which is your anti-inflammatory drug, and when you did get symptoms, you just take a blue reliever. What we realise now is that’s not correct. If you have got symptoms, it means your inflammation is not controlled, so taking the blue reliever on its own is not the solution," she added.
During the webinar, Paulsen warned that if you are using your blue inhaler more than twice a week, it is a sign of poor control.
"Even mild asthmatics experience exacerbation and attacks. What you find is that these are the patients that tend to overuse or over-rely on their blue reliever inhalers which actually increases the risk of these attacks," she said.
Paulsen recommended that people with asthma use www.rateyourreliance.com to take a simple two-minute test, to check their reliance on the blue inhaler. She suggested they present the results to their GP to review and in turn help manage their over reliance.
- Be aware of your triggers: Asthma can be triggered by your environment through things like dust, pollen and secondary smoking.
- Just because your asthma symptoms are mild; it does not mean you are less prone to an asthma attack.
- You should not use your blue relief inhaler more than twice a week.
- The blue inhaler should be used in conjunction with an anti-inflammatory inhaler.
- Visit your GP and ask for a written action plan to avoid being hospitalised and manage your symptoms.
With South Africa having the fifth-highest asthma death rate in the world and with no cure, Paulsen's motto for managing asthma is "Reduce inflammation, and you will reduce the mortality."
This post was sponsored by AstraZeneca and produced by Adspace Studio.
