Asthma mortality: an analysis of one years experience, review of the literature and assessment of current modes of therapy

Abstract

This analysis of asthma mortality has emphasized the roles played in its pathogenesis by different modes of therapy as reported in the literature. In addition attention was directed towards yet another potentially lethal therapeutic modality, IPPB, the efficacy and potential benefits of which are critically questioned. IPPB treatments were related to every fatal episode of asthma which made up the entire asthma mortality experience during a 12 month period at Morrisania Hospital. The adverse consequences of IPPB therapy were reviewed and it was further suggested that its use in acute asthma attacks was related to lethal episodes of hypoxia and pneumothorax. The patient must, in order to trigger an IPPB apparatus, create a pre-determined negative pressure to initiate inflation. The machine may, therefore, be ineffective in a patient with severe obstruction and greatly increased airway resistance either because of the inability to trigger it or with adequate triggering the subsequent delivery of an inadequate tidal volume at the pressure limitation set. Thus, severe hypercapnia and hypoxia may result especially if oxygen enriched gas mixtures are not used. This may occur even with the delivery of an adequate tidal volume since its distribution within the lungs is poor resulting in a worsening of ventilation-perfusion relationships as evidenced by an increase in the measured physiologic dead space. This experience and review of the literature suggests that IPPB treatment in asthma, especially during an acute attack, should always be administered with small doses of nebulized bronchodilators and oxygen with careful monitoring of arterial blood gases. This will allow for the detection of the adverse effects of this mode of therapy which may exceed the hoped for benefits, the most important being bronchodilatation and subsequent mobilization of secretions with continued treatment.