Patients Can't Tell When Inhalers Run Out of Meds

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- People who take pills to treat their medical conditions have no doubt when they need to refill their prescriptions -- it's when the bottle is empty.

Asthma patients using lifesaving inhalers aren't so fortunate. According to the authors of a new study, inhalers keep expelling puffs long after the actual medication is used up. The only way to tell when the devices are empty is to precisely count each dose used -- something that just isn't practical for most people who use inhalers to treat or control their asthma symptoms. The result: many people end up with an empty inhaler when an acute asthma attack occurs.

In this study, a telephone survey of 342 people who reported using an asthma inhaler to treat acute symptoms showed 87, or about one-fourth, had encountered an empty inhaler when experiencing wheezing, coughing or shortness of breath, and seven ended up having to call 911 for immediate medical attention. Among those 87 people, 71 believed their inhaler was only empty when "absolutely nothing came out." Thirty-six percent of the people surveyed also said no one had ever instructed them to keep count of the doses in their inhalers.

Most rescue inhalers -- those used by patients suffering asthma symptoms -- contain either 200 or 400 doses of medication, say the researchers.

The solution to this problem, continue the authors, is to require all inhaler manufacturers to incorporate dose counters into their devices. In an editorial accompanying the study, John Oppenheimer, M.D., from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, agrees. "The authors' conclusion that manufacturers of inhaled medicines include dose counters as a standard feature on every multidose inhaler device appears reasonable," he writes. "Otherwise, our patients are left to question whether their inhaler device is running on empty."

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SOURCE: Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, 2006;97:34-38, 1-2