Treatment of Asthma

Most people with asthma have two types of asthma medicine: preventer medicine to take every day (usually a preventer inhaler), and reliever medicine to relieve symptoms when needed. This hasn't changed.

But we have a new approach to how to treat people with asthma whose symptoms are not sorted by the steroid preventer inhaler alone. Previously at this point, most people were offered a combination inhaler – containing both a preventer and a long-acting reliever. Now the patients are offered a tablet called an LTRA (leukotriene receptor antagonist) to take alongside the preventer inhaler for 4-8 weeks to see if it makes a difference. It will make this recommendation based on the evidence of what will be best for patients, but also considers the economic cost– with LTRA coming out as more cost-effective than a combination inhaler

If you're already on a combination inhaler already, and your asthma is well controlled, then there is no need to change your treatment.

Asthma world welcomes any guidelines that look at improving the diagnosis and treatment of asthma. It is used alongside your healthcare professional's clinical judgment; help get the right care for you, based on the latest evidence. The most important thing is that your asthma care is personalized. This means your healthcare professional consider your preferences, other medical conditions you have, or medicines you're taking, as well as how good you are at taking and remembering your medicines. All this, alongside expert clinical guidelines, needs to be taken into account when deciding how to treat your asthma.

And it recognizes that putting these guidelines into practice might take time, money and training- not everyone in the world will have standards of care immediately. If the NICE guidelines are not implemented in your area don't worry. Alternative guidelines are not wrong, or unsafe, but NICE have tried to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and improve the cost-effectiveness of treatment of asthma.

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