Primatene is just a bad drug. Don’t use it. There are prescription medications that will do a much better job on your asthma without the cardiac side-effects. As you get older, these side effects can have serious consequences. Primatene isn’t being taken off the market because of some massive conspiracy to send you to an expensive specialist but because patients can get into a bad situation with them.
Some people believe that albuterol is not as effective as drugs like Primatene, but that’s partly because the albuterol takes longer to work. Yet it lasts longer, too. And while it may not be as effective for you, the steroid inhalers like beclomethasone may keep you from needing any bronchodilator inhaler at all.
Asthma can be fatal. If any disease merits consultation with a physician, this does. Please go see an allergist or pulmonologist.
While I agree with your points, do you have a suggestion for those with no health care who can barely afford even the Primatene?
Everybody's reaction to drugs is different, and every drug has some kind of side-effect. Inhaled steroids, for example, have given some indications of increasing cataracts. I think it's pretty much a 'you picks your side effect and you makes your choice' kind of thing.
There was a theophyllin based over the counter product that gave me perfectly good control for twenty years until it was banned, then albuterol, then a combination of long-lasting brochodilators and steroids. They've all been effective, and I haven't used epi in forty years, but I always took some consolation from the knowledge that if I had a mayday attack while away from home, a temporary form of relief was a close as the nearest store.
Quantifying this decision is going to be a challenge. They'll get some of the self-adminstrators in to see doctors, but they're also going to have some unnecessary deaths. Tough call.
Agreed, that is true.
Question then becomes why the BS about CFCs? Nobody with half a brain actually believes asthma inhalers are destroying the ozone layer. How about some straight talk from these people?
It's no wonder no one believes anything coming from federal agencies.
Well I suggest you wake up and smell the coffe through your unasthmatic nose, throat and lungs. Some folks have to use OTC meds because of financial constraints, for some the OTC works just fine. One size does not fit all. I find it quite arrogant that you seem to know and feel so free to state what other’s should do even though they say it does not work for them. And not everyone is so fortunate as to be able to absorb a $100 office call and a $50 prescription. I suppose if they trot on over to the emergency room you’ll have kind words....no you won't you'll be yelling about them using the ER for primary care. Phooey!