Current allergy and asthma reports
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Asthma is an increasingly prevalent disease, particularly in industrialized countries. With modern treatment, many patients can expect good asthma control; however, a significant minority continue to have excessive symptoms. Bronchial thermoplasty is a novel approach to treating asthma in which the hypertrophied airway smooth muscle present in the asthmatic airway is specifically targeted and depleted using thermal energy. In this article, we review the early animal and human development of the technique, summarize the randomized trials carried out in patients to date, discuss proposed mechanisms of action, and suggest directions for future work.
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Exhaled nitric oxide can now be measured in a clinical setting as a noninvasive, reproducible, facile, point-of-service test to measure airway inflammation, a central component of asthma that had not been assessed previously. An excellent surrogate marker of steroid-responsive eosinophilic airway inflammation, it serves to identify steroid-sensitive asthmatic patients and enables clinical monitoring of the response to steroid therapy and titration of the dose. Standardization of methodology and technological advances, such as the recent availability of handheld analyzers, individualized patient cards to store serial test measurements, and the assignment of coding procedural terminology, make this a necessary adjunct to clinical and functional assessment of airway obstruction and hyperresponsiveness in ambulatory pediatric and adult asthma practices.