SiteCore filename: 2owpTjsPJe4_Howhasasthmacarechanged (delete once uploaded)
 
[Text on screen: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
How has asthma care changed?]

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[Text on screen: Megan Conroy, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Ohio State Wexner Medical Center]

Megan Conroy, MD: There have been a lot of changes in asthma care in recent years. We have moved more towards the use of an anti-inflammatory reliever inhaler. This is an inhaler that's not just an albuterol, but also contains an anti-inflammatory corticosteroid, or a steroid, to treat the inflammation that's really the driver of asthma. We know that using an anti-inflammatory reliever, no matter how severe your asthma, be it having symptoms only a couple times a month or symptoms every day, is going to improve the control of your asthma and reduce the risk of significant flare-ups, including the risk of fatal asthma. And among patients who have the most severe asthma, who are most burdened by their disease and whose lives are really limited by these symptoms. We've had a lot of advances in recent years of injectable therapies for asthma, and there's more in the pipeline, including one that might be able to be dosed only every six months.

There are also promising studies looking at new classes of inhaler medications that look to be helpful for patients who have asthma that is uncontrolled, despite taking several different inhaled medications. Still, the mainstay of asthma therapy remains an inhaled steroid, and even when we add new and shiny medications on board, that remains the most important component of your asthma treatment.

[Text on screen: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
For more information, visit: wexnermedical.osu.edu/asthma-care]

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