C. Vibbert

Improving Asthma Communication in High-Risk Children

Few child asthma studies address the specific content and techniques needed to enhance child communication during asthma preventive care visits. This study examined the content of child and parent communications regarding their asthma management during a medical encounter with their primary care provider (PCP). The majority of parents and children required prompting to communicate symptom information to the PCP during the clinic visit. Some high-risk families may require an asthma advocate to ensure that the clinician receives an accurate report of childs asthma severity and asthma control to ensure prescribing of optimal asthma therapy.

Automated actuation of nasal spray products: determination and comparison of adult and pediatric settings

Objective: To determine and compare patient-relevant settings for automated nasal spray actuation stations from adult and pediatric hand data. Methods: Twenty adults and 20 pediatric participants were asked to spray Flonase® Nasal Spray six times in a Hand Actuation Monitor, which records force and displacement data in 5-ms increments. Settings for force- and velocity-controlled actuation stations were determined from the data using a predefined set of calculations. Results: For force-controlled settings, hand spraying by children resulted in lower actuation forces, and longer force rise, hold and fall times. Pediatric velocity-controlled actuator settings were lower for travel, compression velocity, and release velocity compared with adults. The pediatric spray weight recorded during hand spraying was significantly lower than the spray weight generated by adult participants. Adult participants were able to generate full sprays with each attempt, whereas 11 out of 120 actuations performed by pediatric participants resulted in partial and ‘no spray’ events. No differences in spray weight were detected in participants who chose to actuate the nasal spray using both hands. Conclusions: A predefined set of calculations was used to determine patient-relevant settings from force and displacement hand data for force- and velocity-controlled automated actuation stations. This study determined and quantified, for the first time, the differences in hand spraying between adults and children.