Come back diskhalers!

Hi, I'm new, so forgive me if this is in the wrong bit.

I'm 43 and was diagnosed with asthma when I was 4. It doesn't appear to be allergic, so it has been very well controlled with inhalers since I was about 11. For the majority of that time I was on Becotide and Ventolin ""diskhalers"", which worked great, and unlike many other inhalers did not give a decreasing dose during their life. This was a problem for me with earlier versions of the aerosol type inhalers, which started off fine, but as they started to run out then the dosage decreased and my asthma got worse. It was also easy to see when the disks were about to run out, unlike the aerosol type.

I was put on the diskhalers by my GP who I remember told me that they were cheaper for the NHS than the aerosol type. Fine by me, as they worked better. Except that 20 years later I am now told that they are too expensive for the NHS and would no longer be supplied. Now I have to suffer a multitude of other dry powder inhalers which don't work as well, and tend to suffer from the low-dosage syndrome that the old aerosol type suffered from. Some have counters which don't work properly, and some don't have counters at all.

In short, is there any way to get my old diskhalers back?

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HA! i used to have one of them!

I guess you could try accuhalers, i had one of them once and theyre just as good

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Was it a kind of green round device with a kind of trigger that advanced the doses?-if so,I must admit I liked using it as well until it was ""disappeared"" !

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I still ahve diskhalers. I do get funny looks from gp's who arent mine own when i produce it but i still got it.

I got it in salbutamol. I prefer it to the others. I not heard of it not being produced. I picked up a script for it the other day.

Olive

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Diskhalers are still in the BNF, so they can still be prescribed. However, they are now over 10 times the price of an inhaler as far as salbutamol is concerned!

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Amazing! The diskhaler itself of course lasts for years, as it's only the refill disks that get replaced. How a packet of foil blister disks can be more expensive than an entire new Accuhaler is beyond me. Maybe it's just economies of scale that make the diskhalers non-viable.

Thanks for the replies.