Justines Asthma pages

Asthma cannot be cured (not yet anyway). treatments for asthma are aimed to reduce the severity, frequency and length of your attack. Because  there are so many different factors involved in asthma, a treatment plan will be individual to you with a combination of medicines and asthma managment arranged to benifit you. Asthma is very individual indeed.

Inhalers (also known as puffers) contain a gas that will propel the correct dose of medication when the top of it is pressed down. This can be inhaled by a big breath in into the airways. Inhalers need to be used correctly in order for them to work and this can be done from an asthma nurse or doctor showing you when first receiving inhalers. There are two basic catergories of inhaler medicines used for asthma.

Relievers - which treat your symptoms.

                          Preventers - to prevent asthma symptoms.                  

Relievers are to be used when your asthma symptoms occur. They can be short acting or long lasting. Short acting relievers contain medicines such as salbutamol (ventolin) and bricaynl work quickly to widen your airways and ease your symptoms. Relievers inhalers are usually blue or green in colour.

Preventers are used every day for asthma - even if you do not have any symptoms at all. They are used to help prevent you asthma symptoms. Preventers usually always contain a steroid medicine like becotide and flixotide. These work to reduce the imflamation of your airways. The side effects of these incude a sore mouth or throat. It can take up to six weeks for the full effect of these preventers to work, but once they do you might not even need to use a reliever medication at all. Preventer inhalers are usually brown, red or orange. Preventer inhalers should always be taken when prescribed .

A spacer is a device used to help use your inhaler correctly. It helps by trapping the medication puffed out by the inhaler so that we get all the medication and none is wasted. It usually is a long clear tube or cylinder which your inhaler fits into an end an clips in. At the other end of it there is a mouthpiece to breath in and out of. Using a spacer also reduces the risk of getting a sore throat or mouth. Spacers used to be very big and bulky and some people would not carry them around with them. Now a days they come also in more compact forms which fit easily into a pocket or hand bag. They are a very effective way of making sure all the medication in inhalers is inhaled.

If you have a severe asthma attack you may be treated with a course or steroids tablets, such as prednisolone. In this situation they are used as a releiver medication. If you take these for about a week there are few side-effects. Side effects with steroids usually happen with longer courses over months and years. Several other medications are available as tablets or inhalers if standard treatment is not suitable for you. These are usually given if your asthma is not well controlled. These include tablets like montelukast, zafirlukast and theophylline. Also injections of steroids and oxygen are used for severe attacks. With good managment and everyday doses of medications most asthmatics can lead completely normal lives.

Could bronichial thermoplasty offer a new alternative to people with severe asthma who do not respond well to excisting treatments. This theraphy has shown to be a considerable benefit to peoples asthmas control. Asthma is one of the most common medical conditions effecting more than five million people world wide. In asthma suffers the tubes that carry air in and out are sensitive and become easily swollen. The condition is usually treated with inhalers which deliver medicine straight to the lungs causing muscles to relax and open in the airways. How ever some asthmatics medication fail to keep their asthma under control. Severe asthma patents have lots more smooth muscle around the airways than milder asthmatics. This muscle narrows the air passages when it contracts. Bronchial thermoplasty has been in developement for around 10yrs and it delivers thermal energy to the airways and reduces smooth muscle. Patients are given light sedation and then a flexable, thin tube is inserted through the nose or mouth into the airways. At the end a basket device opens and expands towards the airway walls and emits the heat. Patients get this treatment over three seperate sessions, each covering a different part of the lung each time which lasts just under 1 hour. The results from the trials say the benefits last for around 1 year. People with asthma who recieved thermoplasty experienced around 10 fewer attacks a year and where free of asthma symptoms on an average of 86 days of the year (great). More research is still needed into long term effects of this treatment, but overall its sounding promising and I would like this treatment if made available to me. While this procedure is designed to reduce asthma symptoms, it is not intended to serve as a cure for the disease.