Medications to Treat Inflammation: Corticosteroid/LABA (Nursing)

00:01 Hi, welcome to another one of our videos on respiratory medications.

00:05 In this video, we’re gonna look at the medications to treat the other problem with asthma patients - inflammation.

00:11 Now these are not rescue meds but these are, we give these medications to prevent asthma attacks.

00:18 So we can start with some combination inhalers.

00:20 Sometimes you take corticosteroids and put it with a long acting beta-2 adrenergic agonist or a LABA.

00:27 When we put these medications together, remember the goal is to prevent inflammation, not for rescue inhalers, it's just for prevention.

00:37 Now stop a minute and take a look at the drawing that they have for you here, this graphic is beautiful.

00:42 On the bottom, you see the blue space represents how the air flows through.

00:47 That’s what you would want - that’s a nice open airway (inhales, exhales).

00:54 You could easily take a nice relaxing breath.

00:57 But someone who has inflammation in their airways- that’s the top drawing, see that? how the airway is much much smaller.

01:06 So even on a good day, somebody who suffers from an inflamed airway from like asthma or any respiratory disorder that causes this inflammatory response, is already gonna start with a narrowed airway.

01:19 So they did a really good job giving you a graphic representation there of what the difference is in an airway in somebody who has an inflamed airway and somebody who does not.

01:29 So take your time and just write your note there, I want you to add in the words on that picture - “inflamed airway, narrowed”.

01:37 So that will remind you that’s what we’re dealing with.

01:39 which is why attacks are such a problem for your patients.

01:43 They already have a narrowed airway, and then when they have an asthma attack, it's even worse.

01:49 I'm gonna list some medication for you there on your screen.

01:52 You can see the names that these, these are medications that we use that will give us both a corticosteroid which directly supresses inflammation, and a LABA (a long acting beta-2 adrenergic agonist) Put the two together and that really helps us minimize the risk for ongoing attacks as we go forward.

02:13 NOT a rescue inhaler LIke wow! how many times is she gonna say that? A thousand times more.

02:21 Because I need to be sure that these nurses out in the public with your family and teaching your patients that this is stuff that will save a life.

02:30 You have to know the difference between LABAs and SABAs or the short acting and the long acting.

02:35 And also, one of my dear friends was on one of these medications and she would just take it on the days when she felt like she was having a problem.

02:44 I couldn't believe it, she's gone the same specialist and extra people and it wasn't till we got to talking and asking the right questions.

02:53 Now this is somebody who's precious to me, somebody I hang out with all the time and she was having severe asthma.

02:58 They never explained to her that she needed to take these everyday no matter how she felt and that's why she was having all these serious asthma attacks.

03:09 She was just taking them on the day she didn't feel great, was having some problems.

03:12 Once we went to a regular schedule with her - worked like a charm.

03:17 So there's somebody in my own circle that I could have impacted but I didn't realize the wrong advice they had gotten so your job is to make sure your patients are more effectively educated and their lives are gonna be much better.