Asthma – Worse than Cancer?

Asthma – Worse than Cancer?
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
Asthma kills more people than well spoken asthma researcher, pointed out an interesting fact. At the moment, asthma kills about 0.5 people per 100,000 people in the general population. That may not sound like a lot, but one serious type of cancer called non-solid lymphoma also kills 0.5 people per 100,000 in the general population. So why isn’t there a public out cry about asthma deaths.cancer. Now that I’ve got your attention, perhaps I should qualify that a little. I attended a conference in Winnipeg about asthma education in Manitoba and one of the presenters, Dr. Allan Becker, a pediatric allergist and
What is worse than 0.5 people per 100,000 people in the general population dying of asthma, is the fact that Dr. Becker says that 90% of all asthma deaths are preventable. So what is asthma and what can we do about it?
Asthma is "a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways characterized by paroxysmal or recurrent symptoms (cough, wheeze, chest tightness, and shortness of breath), with variable airflow limitation and airway hyperresponsiveness to a variety of stimuli". Now if that isn't a mouthful, I don't know what is. Let's break that down into some manageable parts.
First, your lungs are not just big bags of air. Inside your lungs are lots and lots of air way tubes that branch into finer and finer tubes like the roots of a tree. Towards the ends of this branching airway system, the tubes get really small, so it doesn't take very much to block them. Now we'll talk about inflammation. If you took a piece of sandpaper and rubbed your hand with it, your hand would get red and swollen right? Well that is just what happens in the tiny tubes in the lungs during an asthma attack. They get red and swell shut. We call this inflammation. Finally, in asthma, having the airways swell shut doesn't happen all the time. It comes and goes, and usually we can identify and avoid triggers that cause the inflammation to happen.
There was a survey of Canadian asthmatics back in 1999. First they asked the asthmatics if they thought their asthma (or their child’s asthma) was under good control. Ninety percent said it was. Then they asked them six questions (which we will get to later). If they answered yes to 2 or more of the questions, the patients actually had poor asthma control. Sixty percent of the asthmatics interviewed actually had poor asthma control.
So what, you say? If the patient is happy with their asthma control, why should we care that some 6 question test says their control is bad? Because these asthmatics with poor control represent about 80% of asthmatics that end up in emergency rooms. These poorly controlled asthmatics also represent 99% of the asthmatics that miss school/work/social outings due to their asthma.
So what are these six magic questions?
1. Do you have problems with coughing, wheezing, breathlessness or chest tightness 3 or more times per week?
2. Do you need to use your fast acting inhaler (usually your blue puffer) 3 or more times per week?
3. Do symptoms like cough, wheeze, breathlessness or chest tightness wake you up more than once a week?
4. Have there been any physical activities that you were unable to do in the past 3 months due to your asthma?
5. Have you missed any school or work in the past 3 months due to asthma?
6. Have you had to go to the emergency room or hospital due to asthma in the past 6 months?
So what should you do if your asthma isn’t in good control? Contact your doctor. Also, read next week and we will discuss asthma treatments.
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.