Asthma Breakthrough
Read about Asthma
Breakthrough presented in simple easy to understand language
May 25, 2006 — Many people with asthma live
with the fear that the next breath they take might be their last.
To keep their airways open, many have to inhale large doses of
steroids twice a day. For some, even that's not enough.
So researchers are trying a radically different kind of treatment —
bronchial thermoplasty — a procedure that could revolutionize the
way those with asthma are treated. The procedure has been tested in
Canada and is now the subject of 17 clinical trials in the United
States, where 20 million people endure the disorder.
The treatment requires three outpatient visits of about an hour, in
which patients are sedated and doctors snake a fiber-optic camera
down their windpipe and into the airways that fill their lungs.
Doctors then apply bursts of heat, at about the temperature of a hot
cup of coffee, through these wires, using the heat to shrink
overgrown muscles that block airways.
Much More Stamina
In Canada, where the treatment has been tested on dozens of people,
results released this week show that while bronchial thermoplasty
does not cure asthma, patients who underwent the treatment later
required much less medication and experienced significantly fewer
asthma attacks.
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