A Call for Expanding the Role of the Emergency Physician in the Care of Patients With Asthma

Improving Quality of Asthma Care After Emergency Department Discharge: Evidence Before Action

“…In an accompanying editorial, Singer et al 7 propose emergency physicians adopt a more ''nontraditional'' management approach by prescribing inhaled corticosteroid antiinflammatory agents and delivering asthma education. They claim that this approach is intuitive, evidence-based, and relatively easy to implement and that their case is sufficiently strong that we should all be doing this now as part of usual care.…”

Emergency Physicians' Prescribing of Asthma Controller Medications

“…The NAEPP guidelines state that medications used after an ED visit should include inhaled ␤-receptor agonists and orally administered systemic corticosteroids, but there is no recommendation that LTCM therapy should be initiated at this stage. 5,6 Some authors are now calling for emergency physicians to consider strongly the initiation of ICS therapy at ED discharge, 33 whereas others are discouraging widespread adoption of this approach pending more data. 34 The failure to prescribe LTCMs after an ED visit for asthma may represent a lost opportunity to intervene on behalf of an at-risk population.…”

Pulmonary function testing in the Emergency Department and medications prescribed at discharge: results of the Multinational Acute asthma Management, Burden, and Outcomes (MAMBO) study

“…29 Initiation of acute and chronic medications can potentially benefit patients at the time of ED discharge. 30,31 Potential limitations of our study include not determining the reasons why HCPs did not perform PFT, or whether equipment for performing PFT was available at each site. Also, exclusion of HCPs involved in clinical trials may have resulted in underestimating the proportion of HCPs performing PFT.…”