The autumn/winter edition of your members’ magazine packed with useful features, clinical updates, educational updates, respiratory news and opinion.

This summary infographic provides an overview of the new MART therapy which has been licensed for children of 6 - 11 years old. It provides a breakdown of what the new licensed product is, who it is appropriate for, when to consider introducing your asthma patients to it and how it should be implemented to ensure it is introduced effectively. Acknowledgement

The BTS/NICE/SIGN asthma guidelines now recommend moving away from blue (reliever) and brown (preventer) inhalers. Many people with asthma still rely on their blue inhaler despite the fact they:Do not treat the underlying inflammation, andCan result in worse asthma control and increased symptoms. Brown inhalers also often do not treat the symptoms quick enough. 

Anti-inflammatory reliever (AIR) is a single inhaler treatment for asthma which can be used by people with asthma and who experience asthma symptoms twice a week or less. It removes the need to have separate preventer (brown) and reliever (blue) inhalers. 

In this PCRS Health Inequalities podcast Leslie Borrill and Rebecca Jacobs discuss suicide and suicide prevention in long-term respiratory conditions. They cover:

In this PCRS Health Inequalities podcast Noreen Grant, Lisa Cummings and Aaron Foulds (PCRS patient reference group representative) talk about the impact of respiratory disease on mental health. They cover:

In this PCRS Health Inequalities podcast Katherine Hickman (PCRS executive chair, Kaniksha Aggarwal, Martin Sutcliffe and Sue Wheatcroft discuss respiratory disease and mental health in the context of the UK prison setting. They touch on:

The new BTS/NICE/SIGN guideline, Asthma: Diagnosis, monitoring and chronic asthma management (NG245) has placed fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) early in the diagnostic algorithm, which has caused some concern. Many healthcare settings do not have access to FeNO and are not therefore familiar with its use. It also has cost implications for healthcare commissioners across the UK, at a time when they have been asked to reduce running costs.