breathe-buteyko.co.uk

This would free up money to pay for a trainer in each doctor’s surgery so that Buteyko would be the first line treatment for asthma. In most instances, this would mean medication would not be needed at all. When you take into account the cost of maintaining a patient’s drug regime for the rest of his or her life as the condition deteriorates, it’s easy to see that huge savings could be made. The staff is there. It would be a simple matter to retrain an asthma nurse in the technique. All it requires is a change of mindset and a little education.

This is even more important when the patient is a child. Putting aside the obvious moral issues of condemning a child to a life of unnecessary drug dependence, the cost alone is prohibitive. Unfortunately when a young child is given a bronchodilator, the deterioration can be extremely rapid. The Buteyko theory can explain this easily, but as long as the theory is ignored, there is no alternative for the poor child but to take stronger and stronger medication just to survive. As a result, the costs too escalate as stronger, more expensive drugs, doctors and regular hospital visits all become an integral part of the child’s life.

That bronchodilators, or beta-agonists, can have an adverse effect on the condition of asthmatics has been known since the 1990s (see Chapter 3). More recently, Cornell and Stanford Universities released a study in 2004 on short-acting beta-agonists like albuterol, or salbutamol, and terbutaline. These are found in medications such as Ventolin and Bricanyl respectively.

In the study, Shelley Salpeter, a clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a physician at Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre in San Jose, California, criticised the use of these beta-agonists. Her studies led her to the conclusion that although using them in the short term for emergencies is effective, in the long term they have several disturbing effects.

Ms Salpeter wrote that her findings;

· “associated continuous beta-agonist use by asthma patients with decreased bronchodilator response to subsequent beta-agonist administration.” In other words, the more you use them, the less effective they become

· associated continuous beta-agonist use with, “increased airway inflammation.” This means that the airways of asthmatics who use these drugs become inflamed so they are at an even greater risk of having asthma attacks.

Finally, the Cornell-Stanford research found evidence that compared to patients given only placebos, in those given beta-agonists the risk of heart attacks was more than doubled.

If the first two conclusions had been reached in Australia in the 1990s, why had they taken so long to resurface? Ms Salpeter and her colleagues found that many subsequent studies of beta-agonists turned out to have a conflict of interests. In some instances the studies were founded by pharmaceutical companies, in others researchers had financial ties to the industry. Sometimes both of these were true.

It’s illogical to expect scientists with a vested interest in the success of a product to be impartial to the results of the trials they are conducting. It would seem only too obvious that they would make every effort to prove that beta-agonists were both effective and safe.

If short-acting bronchodilators have an adverse effect on asthma, then long-acting beta-agonists should have an even worse effect. This is proving to be the case. In July 2005, the New York Times on-line reported a convention of lung panel experts. Its purpose was to advise the US government on whether three of these increasingly popular drugs should be withdrawn from the market because of safety concerns. The drugs concerned were Advair, marketed in the UK as Seretide, Serevent and Foradil.

Whatever the truth, these drugs can’t be withdrawn now because too many people rely on them. This does not mean that they are safe, simply that millions of people