Question

You are seeing a young previously healthy patient in the Emergency room with an acute asthma attack. She looks very uncomfortable, she has diffuse wheezing throughout all lung fields and is requiring 50% oxygen by face mask to maintain oxygen saturations above 90%. A nurse reports that when the patient blows in her peak flow meter it reads in the normal range. What should you do next?

	a.	Send the patient home. She is better
	b.	Repeat the peak flow several more times
	c.	Ignore the results and treat for severe asthma
	d.	Get another peak flow meter

Answer 1

Option a is wrong as Here the Individuals who was previously all normal suddenly went into an asthma attack and is now having a normal peak value but requires 50% O2 which means she is having sever asthma attack and peak value is abnormal or might be normal due to forced ventilation effect . She should not be allowed to go home until she is capable of breathing without a mask .so it is a false

Option b is wrong as repeating the peak flow is not the important thing to do as the patient is having severe asthma attack so she should be taken care and given enough care and not just rechecking the peak flow value

Option c is the answer even if the peak flow value is normal as the patient is suffering from acute asthma attacks and is facing lack of saturation of O2 and requiring 50% O2 to maintain 90% spo2 . So the peak flow value is not normal and it should be ignored and quick interventions for asthma should be initiated

Option d us wrong as getting another leak flow meter and wasting the time is not practical as interventions for asthma should be initiated immediately