What is it about?
This randomized study compared usual care of adults with emergency asthma with usual care plus IV steroids. The steroid group improved faster, felt better and needed hospitalization less often.
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Why is it important?
Asthma is common and dangerous. This study showed that a simple, inexpensive treatment could dramatically improve the success of treatment in the emergency room. Also, because methylprednisolone is an anti-inflammatory medicine, it showed that asthma is largely an inflammatory disease. This changed the scientific and clinical approach to asthma and led to a wholesale change in management and many new treatments.
Perspectives
Within months of publication, asthma management had changed in virtually every Emergency Room around the world.
Benjamin Littenberg
University of Vermont
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Controlled Trial of Methylprednisolone in the Emergency Treatment of Acute Asthma, The New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and the Collateral Branches of Science, January 1986, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM/MMS),
DOI: 10.1056/nejm198601163140304.
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