Asthma Drugs Have Risks
An FDA panel raised concerns about two Asthma drugs on the market based on their risks for patients including the risk of death. The two drugs, Serevent and Foradil, have been named as possibly causing increased risk of death in the patients who use the drug according to the report from the FDA advisory panel.
Another commonly prescribed asthma medication, Advair, was not included in the warning.
Long Acting Beta Agonists (LABAs)
All of these medications, Advair, Serevent, and Foradil use a formulation of long acting beta agonists to relax respiratory smooth muscles and reduce respiratory distress from the effects of asthma. The key differences between the medications is in the addition of a steroid to Advair which improves the safety profile of this medication.
As the FDA considers the recommendations of the panel, it is important to make sure our patients understand that this does not mean they should stop using their asthma medications. Nurses should counsel patients to continue using their prescribed medications and consult with the prescribers to determine the best medication for their particular cases and history.
Headlines Scare Patients
One of the ways nurses can greatly impact patient health is to provide a resource for patients when they read scary headlines in the news about their medications and medical conditions. Nursing care involves patient education and reassurance. Sometimes patients just need to be calmed and pointed towards reading the whole article rather than just the headline.
Other times, we need to follow-up and read the original research ourselves to be able to present the correct response to the public. Reporters often over-emphasize the results of correlations between findings and medical conditions citing a cause and effect relationship where one doesn’t exist.
The sun rises every morning and the stars disappear from sight. That doesn’t mean the sun erases the stars. Similar relationships are often misinterpretted by the journalists covering medical research.
