Paucis Verbis: Asthma classification
Emergency physicians have the opportunity to educate patients and prescribe chronic inhaled corticosteroids to patients who should be on these medications chronically. Patients may be more receptive to education and advice given immediately after an asthma exacerbation, managed in the ED. Using the National Institute of Health/ National Asthma Education and Prevention Program classification system, physicians can quickly determine if the patient is a candidate for inhaled corticosteroids and initiate therapy accordingly.
PV Card: Asthma Classification system
In short, patients can be classified into one of 4 classes: intermittent, mild persistent, moderate persistent, and severe persistent asthma. Patients in these classes should receive either Step 1, 2, 3, or 4/5 medications, respectively. I remember that patient using daily short-acting beta agonists (SABA) belong to the moderate persistent asthma category.
Go to ALiEM (PV) Cards for more resources.
To follow up with the wildly popular Paucis Verbis card made by Dr. Hans Rosenberg (University of Ottawa), here is his card on Dental Infections. This card summarizes common dental infection complaints (like the periapical abscess seen to the right) that we see in the Emergency Department.
How cool is this — I have talented emergency physicians contributing Paucis Verbis card content! This week features excellent pearls on Dental Trauma by Dr. Hans Rosenberg (University of Ottawa). Here’s his recent article in Annals of EM on reimplantation of avulsed teeth.