2011 Asthma Guidelines
The British Thoracic Society / SIGN Guidelines on asthma have been updated for 2011. There don’t seem to be any modificiations to the sections on acute severe asthma which were updated in 2009 and blogged here, although the treatment algorithms seem to be presented in a slightly different format and therefore are reproduced here:
Management of acute severe asthma in adults in hospital
Management of acute asthma in children in hospital
Thanks Cliff. Good to re-visit these guidelines for in-hospital management. Of course, as a rural doctor I sit on both sides of the fence – I see these patients in clinic, and also at 2am (well, hopefully not mine, because they’re all wellmanaged, but you get the idea!)
Since coming to Oz a decade ago, I felt like I was the only doc measuring peak flows routinely in clinic and at triage. I know that PEF is still part of the ‘asthma action plan’ used by GPs but talking to the Asthma Foundation and many other primary care doctors, many still don’t seem to think it’s a useful measure.
Am I just being old-fashioned? Or having trained in the UK under one of the BTS gurus is this habit too well ingrained?
What do you think? Should every asthma patient know their best Peak Flow? I do, but you’d be amazed how many asthma patients don’t.
Next up, ketamine for RSI in these patients…thoughts?
Where has the IV salbutamol gone for adults? Should I stop using it in life threateneing unresponsive asthma?