James Krings, MD, MSCI

New asthma guidelines recommend that healthcare providers consider advising their patients to use combination inhaled corticosteroids (ICS)/beta-agonists inhalers on a rescue basis (or only when asthma symptoms are present) rather than on a maintenance basis. The evidence for these recommendations come from several large multicenter trials that have demonstrated the approach is as good as or better than traditional asthma therapy. However, clinically in the United States this new inhaler approach is still frequently not used and has several barriers to real-world clinical practice. In this study we aim to explore why providers do, or do not, use this inhaler approach in practice and what we can do to overcome the barriers to its usage.