27: How a new test is improving asthma care

It’s suspected that 30 per cent of 5.4 million patients currently diagnosed with asthma in the UK have been misdiagnosed. The NHS spends £1.1 billion on asthma treatment and management annually, with 90 per cent of this cost going directly on medication, including the prescription of steroid inhalers. In this episode, we hear about a programme to improve the diagnosis and management of asthma within primary care, involving the spread of a breathing test called FeNO. This test looks at how much nitric oxide – a type of gas – is in your breath when you breath out and can show the level of inflammation in the lungs. The test is easy to do, you simply breath into a tube - and it takes less than a minute. FeNO testing is a key piece in the diagnostic jigsaw and can help improve care for people with asthma.Host Dr Phil Jennings talks to severe asthma sufferer Emma Thompson and Carol Stonham, a Senior Nurse Practitioner and the Executive Chair of the Primary Care Respiratory Society.Carol is a member of the national FeNO programme, one of the Rapid Uptake Product programmes, run by the NHS England Accelerated Access Collaborative with the support of the AHSN Network.Find out more about the Rapid Uptake Products (RUP) programme, designed to support stronger adoption and spread of proven innovations. Professionals can access a wide range of support tools for implementing FeNO testing, on the Wessex AHSN website.