Dangerous asthma inhalers have foreign officials concerned
Have you ever forgotten your asthma inhaler at home and felt fearful that symptoms would crop up while you drove back home to pick it up? Have you ever been hit with potentially deadly symptoms and been saved by your inhaler? Asthma medicine saves lives and prevents trips to the hospital every day, but that doesn’t mean the devices we use to administer the medicine always work properly.
In a recent recall alert overseas, United Kingdom asthma patients using certain types of Ventolin Accuhalers and Seretide Accuhalers were asked to return the devices for replacements. The recall affected nearly 6,000 inhalers that U.K. officials say might not deliver the full amount drugs that patients rely on to reduce asthma attack symptoms like wheezing, shortness of breath and inflamed bronchial passages. Officials worry that if patients try to use the devices as instructed, they’ll find that their symptoms are not abating as they normally would when taking the medicine. This could end in patients suffering anxiety attacks that worsen their symptoms and trigger a true asthma attack.
The biggest fear is that these defective Ventolin Accuhalers and Seretide Accuhalers hare putting countless patients at risk of serious injury or even death. As such, all patients are being asked to heed this emergency recall warning and replace their devices as soon as they possibly can.
American asthma patients may also want to check with their doctors to ensure that their asthma inhalers are safe — especially if any problems crop up relating to the inhalers. If an injury or death results from a problematic asthma inhaler, affected patients and their family members may want to learn about how the California personal injury law system might view their potential claims for financial compensation.
Source: Manchester Evening News, “Thousands of asthma inhalers recalled after fault found that ‘could put people’s lives at risk’,” Ella Pickover, Feb. 22, 2018