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Can peak-flow-gadget help to control asthma attack?

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tom_65833
tom_65833

Hello! I'm asthmatic within 10 years. Medical recomendation can't help me. Has anybody used peak-flow-gadget synchronized your smartphone (or peak flow meters) for control asthma attack? Interested in opinions , pros cons.

 

0 likes, 7 replies

7 Replies

  • DawnDedee
    DawnDedee tom_65833

    Posted

    My experience is that the peak flow meter is an easy tool to gauge lung function downward changes so that I can address the issue early by either calling in to the doctor for extra treatments or using any medications I keep on hand, like prednisone or an antibiotic or an inhaler, that my doctor allows me to administer to myself, or getting to the emergency room.

    I have kept peak flow diaries and that helped me and my doc to see my breathing patterns. Which part of the day am I worse or better. What was I doing or not doing at the time. And for the doc to determine if a more or less aggressive approach with medications is warranted.

    Peak flow is a great tool. However I have never heard of it being linked to a smart phone but it sounds pretty cool.

    Overall, I can not find any con's about it.

    Dawn

    • tom_65833
      tom_65833 DawnDedee

      Posted

      Thanx very much!

      How oftеn you use it? 

      You carried with it?

       

    • DawnDedee
      DawnDedee tom_65833

      Posted

      Throughout my years from my twenties up to my thirties, I used it almost daily to track my lung function ups and downs so my doc and I could get to know my patterns.  

      My peak flow is taken now and again in the emergency room but that is all.  My readings are consistently in the low 200's on a good day, more than half what it should be.  Since I seem to have stayed the same over the last 20 years, there is really no need to do it anymore.  Some docs in the past have insisted on my keeping a diary of the readings.  Now my doc and I just do a lung function study once a year to track any major changes.  

      After all those years of getting to know my condition and my body and how I respond to medications and viruses that I know the moment in time when something changes in my lungs and I go for help immediately because I learned also that when the brain has less oxygen, it does not think well.  Too many times during the getting to know myself years, I waited too long to go for help and would end up hospitalized.  

      So it is a process.  I used to carry it with me especially when I would do active things like hike,  But now I do not even own one.  I know myself so well that my doc works with me very well because he knows how well I know myself.

      Glad to help!  Ask me anything else you might think I could help with.  Being able to help others makes my life of suffering worth something!

      Dawn

    • DawnDedee
      DawnDedee

      Posted

      I meant less than half of what the peak flow should be if my lungs were healthy given my height and what ever other variables they base the science on.
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