Hello there, I came across an interestsing journal article recently that may help people using salamol inhalers.
"Quality improvement project assessing the feasibility of using canister weight to estimate remaining doses in a salamol pressurised metred - dose inhaler" - Beckett RS
A study of families in England found that many were using expired salamol inhalers breathing in just propellant or discarding still working inhalers.
Ultimately it recomended that people are encouraged to weigh their cannister on a kitchen scale and consider that a salamol cannister <10 grams weight suggested close to empty and recommended replacement.
The other interesting part of the study revealed that as the cannister is used up the rate of weight reduction is much more gradual towards the end (I guess because it is mainly propellant leftover) and could be quite misleading for people estimating that they have more medicine than is actually in the inhaler.
I checked some spare inhaler cannisters I had around the house and was shocked when I weighed them they were below 10 grams and would have no medicinal value.
Hope this helps and gets people thinking as I think there is a real danger of getting ill and when you are sick you are not particularly sharp or focused on measurement and might be just inhaling propellant!
Take good care.
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backspinner
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Funny you should post this , for the last two months my Salamol inhaler has been running out well before the prescribed 200 actuations I use it four times daily each time single dose started this one on the 20th of Feb now 9th March and its spluttering, but try telling that to your GP like I have when requesting a replacement, fortunately I carry a spare.
Interesting backspinner. A couple of years ago I read a similar article about a study in the USA - the findings were the same. In the US study they also found that a big percentage of people (can’t remember the figure, maybe 70%?) who went to the emergency department were using an inhaler that only contained propellant. As a result of the findings the FDA ruled that all rescue inhalers had to have counters. (I think this decision also factored in savings/ cost effectiveness.) Perhaps this study might move the U.K. towards the same decision.
Yes, it always strikes me as insane that most maintenance inhalers have counters but the reliever doesn't!
I wrap a bit of masking tape around mine and try to mark off every time I use a dose, but it does rely on me being well enough to remember to do that. I tend to add 10-15 doses on to the recorded total when deciding if I need to replace it, so that I'm allowing for any times I forget to mark the cannister.
thank you! That's so helpful. I was reprimanded in A&E a few years ago for having a ventolin inhaler with me that was empty but it still sounded as if it had medication in it. Since then I've been confused about when the darn thing is actually empty!
I expect there is a recommended empty cannister weight for ventolin available online too and you could choose a safe discard weight to allow for a margin of error.
This was years ago before there was so much information available on the net. I was feeling like rubbish and this doctor was so angry with me! But no amount of Ventolin would have rescued me at that point anyway. In fact it wasn't the asthma that was the problem then, it was a laryngeal spasm but he hadn't any exposed that so he was frustrated that I wasn't improving on a nebuliser with salbutamol in it.
Hi backspinner , this looks like a really interesting article. I googled it but no luck - could I ask where you saw this? I'd like to read. Best regards.
I search for asthma articles every month on google scholar. The link where I found it on is adc.bmj.com/content/early/2... but it is only a description and I had to get a friend who has access to academic journals to access the full article for me. It is only two pages or so. Perhaps you kow someone with journal access.
When I get a little bit confused about whether a particular Salamol inhaler is running low. I float it in a glass of water. A new full inhaler sinks lower than the used inhaler.
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