Patients with severe asthma exacerbations will get the proverbial "kitchen sink" thrown at them when it comes to treatment. First of all, that old idiomatic statement posits asthma treatment as a battle, which it shouldn't be. But you should be armed with a solid understanding of the evidence behind the treatments that we use when treating patients with this potentially fatal disease.
This collection of posts is all about asthma - which I suspect you'll see in the ED at least a few times during your career.
Though a meta-analysis shows that racemic epi may help on the initial visit, the AAP recommended that it not be used as a trial therapy for most outpatient providers in its latest clinical practice guideline. You'll see that my original post and recommendation aligns with what the AAP [...]
Though meta-analyses and systematic reviews - see below - have shown that beta agonists may improve symptoms scores they certainly don't affect disease resolution. Thus, since clinical scores are subjective and don't necessarily correlate with objective measurements. When sensitivity analysis is used to weed out [...]