Assessment and management of adults with asthma during the covid-19 pandemic
Thomas Beaney, David Salman, Tahseen Samee, Vincent Mak
Abstract
### What you need to know A 35 year old man contacts his general practice reporting a dry cough and increased shortness of breath for the past three days. He has a history of asthma, for which he uses an inhaled corticosteroid twice daily and is now using his salbutamol four times a day. Because of the covid-19 outbreak, he is booked in for a telephone consultation with a general practitioner that morning. Asthma is a condition commonly encountered in primary care, with over five million people in the UK prescribed active treatment.1 While seemingly a routine part of general practice, asthma assessment is a particular challenge in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, given the overlap in respiratory symptoms between the two conditions and the need to minimise face-to-face assessment. Over 1400 people died from asthma in 2018 in England and Wales,2 while analyses of non-covid-19 deaths during the covid-19 outbreak have shown an increase in deaths due to asthma,31 highlighting the need to distinguish the symptoms of acute asthma from those of covid-19 and manage them accordingly. This article outlines how to assess and manage adults with exacerbations of asthma in the context of the covid-19 outbreak (box 1). We focus on the features differentiating acute asthma from covid-19, the challenges of remote assessment, and the importance of corticosteroids in patients with an asthma exacerbation. Box 1 ### Asthma and covid-19: what does the evidence tell us? #### Are patients with asthma at higher risk from covid-19? Some studies, mostly from China, found … RETURN TO TEXT