Our severe asthma clinic cares for people with asthma that doesn’t get better with the usual medications used to treat asthma.
Asthma is a common condition and most people have mild to moderate symptoms and are able to control these symptoms with medication.
People with severe asthma have uncontrolled asthma even when taking medication prescription correct, and other triggers for asthma symptoms have been ruled out.
What is severe asthma?
Even if your asthma is difficult to control, it’s not the same as severe asthma. Severe asthma can be different from one person to another, but it can include asthma that can:
- Be highly unpredictable in occurrence and severity
- Be life threatening if the asthma attack is very severe
- affect the patient’s health and ability to get on with daily life because of medication side effects
- occur even when the patient is on strong oral steroid medication
- lead to two or more emergency visits to hospital every year.
Severe asthma is the most serious and life-threatening form of asthma. Someone with severe asthma struggles to manage their symptoms even with high doses of medicines.
If your symptoms are getting worse do not ignore them.
They’re a sign that your asthma is not well controlled. Make an appointment with your GP or asthma nurse to get your asthma reviewed.
What will happen during my clinic appointment?
During your appointment, we will ask you about your symptoms and current treatment.
We will try to transfer any previous results and investigations before your appointment, to make sure we have as much information as possible and that tests do not have be to repeated unnecessarily.
One treatment option we consider is a type of treatment known as a ‘biologic’. Before we can offer you a biologic treatment, we will look at:
- How often you collect your prescriptions for asthma.
- How you take your inhalers.
- Other conditions that may be contributing to your asthma symptoms.
- Your lung function
- Your breath tests and blood tests.
Other services you may meet
Speech and language therapy (SaLT)
Speech and language therapists are specialists in the diagnosis and treatment of upper airway disorders. These can also cause a severe shortness of breath that feels like asthma and be triggered by many things, including exercise, perfumes and deodorants.
Specialist physiotherapy:
We will check your breathing technique by looking at which muscles you use and if your breathing is too fast.
You will meet with a speech and language therapist, a specialist physiotherapist, specialist nurse and an asthma consultant.
If following these further assessments, your asthma does not improve you may be offered biologic treatments.
Biologic treatments you may be given:
- Omalizumab
- Mepolizumab
- Reslizumab
- Benralizumab
How can I be referred into the service?
You can be referred into the service following a visit to the asthma clinic.
Contact us
Tel: 0191 282 4877
