How do you determine which asthma medication to prescribe?

[Text on screen: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
How do you determine which asthma medication to prescribe?]

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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: So we'll determine which medications are right for which patient really depending upon the degree of symptoms and the frequency of symptoms that a person has for their asthma. 

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Some people who have symptoms of asthma only a couple of times a month might do well with just an anti-inflammatory reliever inhaler, and others who have more frequent symptoms of asthma a couple of times a week, every day, or multiple times a day are really going to require inhalers on a daily basis in addition to reliever inhalers.

Any patient with asthma should be on an anti-inflammatory inhaler, either as an anti-inflammatory reliever or as an inhaled steroid component of a maintenance inhaler. There's a lot of different products available in the United States, and the best inhaler, I will generally tell my patients, is the one that you can get, afford, and take on a regular basis.

Each different type of inhaler is taken slightly differently, so it's important that you know exactly how to take the mechanism of the device that you have, and that if you're changing medications, say your insurance coverage changes, that you're checking to see if the way that you take that new medication varies slightly from the old inhaler that you've had.

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In general, the best inhaler for you is going to be the one that you can get and take on a regular basis. Ideally, that's affordable and accessible for you, that is controlling your asthma to an appropriate degree.

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

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