Simple Asthma Plan Could Cut Emergency Hospital Trips

Thousands of asthma hospital admissions could be avoided if patients were given personalised plans to manage their condition, it was claimed yesterday. Almost 400,000 people in Scotland suffer from asthma and more than 6,000 emergency trips to hospital each year are caused by the condition.

Asthma UK Scotland said patients given individual plans on managing their illness were much less likely to suffer an attack and need to go to hospital. But less than a fifth of asthma sufferers in Scotland are thought to have a plan, the charity said.

On World Asthma Day, a researcher also claimed that Scotland’s high rates of asthma – and the highest teenage asthma rate in the world – might be due to the nation’s poor diet.

Dr Graham Devereux, of Aberdeen University, said recent research had found that diet during pregnancy appeared to influence the chances of the child developing asthma in later life.

Asthma UK Scotland is holding a conference in Glasgow tomorrow where experts will discuss the reasons for rising rates of the condition and the best way to care for patients.

Shona Haslam, the new director of Asthma UK Scotland, said that, with such high rates of asthma, it was vital that more work was done to find out the causes and improve care.

“We have a huge rate of asthma in Scotland and the highest rates of teenage asthma in the world,” she said “But we do not know why we have this effect and we need to do more research to find out what the causes are as well as new treatments.”

It is estimated that 75 per cent of emergency hospital admissions caused by asthma would be prevented if patients were given advice on managing their condition. But Ms Haslam said that only a fifth of patients had been given personalised plans and more awareness was needed among health workers to provide them.

The plans offer guidance on what to do when asthma symptoms flare up, including how medication can be adapted as breathing changes during an attack. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland has also called for the plans to be more widely used.

“We need more nurses to be trained in creating these plans. Last year we trained 450 in Scotland,” Ms Haslam said. “We hope this will substantially increase the number of people with asthma plans within the next year. This will help substantially reduce hospital admissions, which saves the NHS money.

“There will always be those with severe asthma who may need to go to hospital. But for people with milder asthma, there is no reason why they cannot manage their condition and carry on with their lives normally.”

The charity’s conference will also hear about the work going on to find out more about asthma. Dr Devereux said many people believed asthma rates were linked to air pollution and exposure to allergens such as dust mites.

Research suggests that exposure to dirt in early life might lead to children being less likely to develop asthma.

Recent research on diet has also suggested that what women eat while pregnant could influence their children’s lung and immune system development.

• LEORA Sinclair has lost count of the times she has had to call 999 as her daughter Courtney struggles for breath.

The seven-year-old was diagnosed with asthma about four years ago, but the family had concerns about her long before that. Now her mother lives in fear that the next attack will be the one that kills her.

“We have had to make loads of 999 calls. She has had to go into hospital twice this year, eight times last year. It is just a constant worry about what will happen. I have to be ready in the night in case she stops breathing.”

Courtney, who lives in Arbroath, has a personalised asthma plan, but her mother said her asthma is so severe this is of little help. “She can go from being OK to having a bad attack in as little as 40 minutes,” she said. “Her asthma has never really been properly controlled and that has been frustrating.”