OVERPUFFED AND UNDERPROTECTED

Salbutamol is mostly harmless, right?

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1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient

2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer 

3. Quick Wrap-up 

Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "I have been using a couple of my blue puffers per month lately for my asthma, is that a problem?"

Concise Conclusion: The problem is that's a strong signal that your asthma is not controlled. If you're not already taking a steroid puffer, we need to get you one that you'll use regularly. Though the blue puffer is generally safe up to 8 doses/day, research shows that using more than 1 inhaler per month is associated with increased risk of asthma-related death.

Quick Wrap-up: Contrast this with COPD, wherein patients can double or triple the max dose with fewer consequences (assuming their controller med is optimized).

Dive Deeper

1) The Use of β-Agonists and the Risk of Death and near Death from Asthma | New England Journal of Medicine

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