Treatment
A person who has asthma and his or her doctor should deride together what are the best and more appropriate treatments in that particular care. The usual treatments for asthma imply :
- - Close collaborations to the doctor in the establishment and the achievement of goals
- - Use of medication for asthma, sometimes combined with allergy medicines and shat
- - Avoid allergy factors or other things that may cause an attack or make the symptoms worse
- - The asthma should be closely monitored, so that a prompt reaction is also to prevent or stop an attack
The desired results are:
- - Control over the disease
- - Decrease of the number of attacks
- - Absence of the symptoms
- - Decrease of quick-relief medicines frequency of use
- - Normal activities may be performed without risks
Self- management plans and emergency plans should be developed by you and your doctor to can control over the disease.
Medicines for asthma
The medicines for asthma are divided into 2 categories:
- Quick-relief medicines that need to be taken during the early signs once also have the capacity to stop immediately an attack
- Long term medication that start having effect after more than a week and need to be taken daily, for long periods of time. They keep the persistent disease under control.
Quick relief medicines
These medicines are needed by all persons that are affected by asthma, because they are able to prevent the attack for getting worn or to stop it. The most popular are the short-acting inhaled beta-agonists relaxing your muscles that obstruct the airwaves.
This kind of medicines should be taken from the very beginning of symptoms and must go everywhere you go. Following your doctor's indication, you may take a quick-relief medicine before some soliciting activities.
Long-term medicines for asthma
An inhaled corticosteroid proved itself more effective than all the others long-term medicines. This kind of medicine can control mild moderate and severe cases of asthma.
An alternative to inhaled corticosteroids are tablets or liquid corticosteroids
There are also other kinds of long-term control medicines:
- - Reukotriene modifiers, which are affective alone in the treatment of mild asthma and in association with corticosteroids for the moderate or severe forms. Such medicines are: montelukast , zafirlukast or zilenton
- - Cromolyn and nedocromil for mild asthma
- - Inhaled long acting beta-agonists, which have bronchodilatatory effect, relax the muscles, very effective in dealing with moderate and severe asthma and the symptoms that occur at night. But they cannot stop the inflammation on their own, so corticosteroids are necessary.
- - Theophylline, which treats alone the mild form and in combination to corticosteroids- the moderate. It requires blood level tests.
The interruption of treatment makes the symptoms return.
The majority of asthma people need both quick-relief and long-term control medicines. The treatment may need changes in time, so the doctor may establish a lower or higher close or combine medicines. Less medication in used the better.
Usually the treatment for asthma involves inhalers. So it is important to know what kind of inhaler do you need and how to use it
A Peak Flow meter may be necessary.
A peak-flow meter is a device that can show you the way your lungs work and how healthy their activity is. You blow the air after a deep breath in the peak flow meter. The number indicates the speed of your expiration.
The “personal best” is obtained by a daily monitoring of the peak flow, and it represents the highest number obtained in few weeks. Future measurements will be compared to this number, to determine whether the disease remains controlled.
The use of a peak flow will be recommended by your doctor that will also prescribe to you the necessary medication. It is also possible that he advises you to use the peak flow meter every day, because this device can give you a warming about the run of an attack before it takes place. In case of a danger, use the emergency plan, take the prescribed medicines and use your quick-relief medicine. Then, you can measure the medication's effect on you by means of the peak flow meter.
Important things that you should now for self-management of asthma:
- - The way and the time to use a peak flow meter
- - The necessary medicines, their doses, the time to take them and how to use them properly
- - When the intervention of the doctor is necessary
- - What are the early symptoms
- - What things affect your sensitive lungs and airways and avoid them
- - When the emergency treatment is necessary.