Fast Fact: What Goals can be ... Video Transcript

Participants

, James Kemp MD, Gabrielle Morris MD

Summary

Asthma strikes a surprisingly large number of Americans. For some it is a nuisance, to others it can be serious. Listen to experts talk about the primary goals of asthma treatment.

Webcast Transcript

JAMES KEMP, MD: Well, the primary goal in treating asthma is to prevent it. Sometimes we can't prevent it. We can control it, and controlling it, there are certain standards that we use, depending on the severity of the disorder.

We would like to think that we could keep all people and all children with asthma from having any attacks of asthma at night, because it disturbs their sleep, it disturbs the family's quality of life, and it's just not good to have asthma at night.

We also would like to think that we could control the asthma to a point where the person doesn't have asthma more than once or twice a week, and they're relatively mild episodes of wheezing that can be improved upon very quickly with reliever medications, a bronchodilator.

But of course, some of the more severe patients with asthma, you can't make that goal. You can't reach that goal, and I think in general what we try to do there is at least improve on their symptoms by 50%. So if they're wheezing every day, they're wheezing every other day. If they're having severe attacks they're having mild attacks. They're not going to the hospital and emergency departments. Because these are episodes of asthma that truly can be life-threatening when they've gotten to that point.

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