Air peak flow

hi, am just wondering my daughter went for her asthma clinic appointment yesterday and she is 6 years old she blew 160, which is below what she should be but how right is it and should i be worried as she is on tablets and purple and now blue inhalers (blue temporally) should i get another opinion and what affect would this have on her body

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Evening Loopylou82,

I am a nurse & until recently a nurse specialist in children's asthma.

In our service we did not start children doing PF until they were about your daughters age as often they cannot do it well EVERY TIME they blow (only 6, better things to do, bored, bit scared, not had enough practice yet etc etc).

However we had an excellent lung function physiologist who has started to get our very difficult asthmatics to start at about 4/5 years & because they were coming back to our clinic very very regularly they did develop a good technique. We did not base our treatment only on the child's predicted or even best PF at that age tho.

We did it on more than one thing i.e. how they looked, their chest sounds & the history from parents.

So my questions would be, how good is your daughters technique EVERY TIME she blow?

Did she do a good blow or if she hasn't done it for some time was her technique not so good?

The other thing we did was to use PF levels on their previous best (I mentions it above) which can only be obtained by taking the PF twice a day for about 2 weeks but only when they are well so that you know what they can blow. So I would guess this has not happened with your & they are basing it on predicted levels/charts.

We rarely used the expected values because of the other things I have mentioned above.

Moving on to medications now.

Every asthmatic should always have a blue inhaler that is the reliever & is never temporarily. You may take it regularly for a whiles when unwell or during the time of year they are bad or they may only use it occasionally as they are well controlled. How much blue is used is a very good indication of how well controlled they are & the aim should be for minimum use of blue BUT ONLY IF THEY DONT NEED IT. If a person needs it they should take it but it need to be taken into consideration by the HCP caring of the patient when doing a review.

The purple is the regular one taken twice a day everyday via a large spacer (LVS) (as she is only 6 & at the moment does not sound under control with her asthma). The small blue one is hard to use under the age of about 8yrs.They only need to use the large spacer for out and about for about another year when she will be old enough to try a hand held device. See your HCP about that one next year. Until then best use the LVS.

The pill I would guess are Montelukast or Singleair yes?

They are add on drugs for asthma (& some other illnesses like allergy) & are not instead of the purple inhaler. They help the purple one work. All of the drugs are very safe & you should not worry. It is more worrying to have uncontrolled asthma.

She should be using an asthma management plan whilst she is unwell that should come from whoever is her health care professional. It should be gone thro with you so you understand exactly what it is & how it works & mostly what to do when things aren't tickertyboo.

I am sorry you are so worried but I hope that this has helped & not confused you.

Email me if you need more info