Goals for Treatment of Asthma
- Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 9:02
- Asthma
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- Rick:
- Dr. Stempel, can you talk a bit about what doctors hope to achieve in the treatment of asthma?
- Dr. Stempel:
- We know of asthma and we talk about asthma as being an inflammatory condition in which there is swelling in the airways, and we have very specific drugs that we use to treat this inflammatory component. So when we talk about patients who have persistent asthma, be it mildly persistent asthma, but people who are affected more days of the week than not with their asthma, then we start using drugs that we call anti-inflammatories. These are preventative drugs. They are drugs like inhaled corticosteroids.Asthma is a disease that for many people comes and goes. And I know it’s very hard for a patient with asthma to say, “I feel well, why should I be using the medication?” But it is of ultimate importance that they use these every day, and this will get us to the point of really improving the underlying asthma condition, really being able to achieve the goals that we want to, which is really enjoying life, being able to be out with your family, your friends, and being able to be physically active.
- Dr. Redding:
- One of the ways that I describe the different treatments for asthma to parents and to adults is, if you have a cough or a wheeze, you use a certain medication that we call a bronchodilator, as a way to alleviate those symptoms, whether they be cough, wheeze or shortness of breath. And that’s the manifestation or the outward presentation of asthma. In contrast to that, when Dr. Stempel talks about anti-inflammatory drugs, he’s really talking about the drugs that treat the process of asthma. And you can treat the symptoms forever, but if you don’t treat the process, you really don’t get to the underlying reason why you’re sick.
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