Severe asthma sufferers experience very frequent episodes of shortness of breath, wheeze and cough, and can suffer sudden attacks resulting in hospital admission. This is disruptive to all aspects of daily life. Many sufferers have required large doses of medication, often including oral steroids, which often result in marked side effects over time. The severe asthma service at Addenbrooke's Hospital acts as the hub for the East of England Severe Asthma Network. This network links up asthma specialists across this large part of England, helping to ensure that patients have access to a streamlined regional service.
Attend Anywhere video consultation
Did you know your outpatient appointment for this service may now be done by video consultation using Attend Anywhere. This enables you to be able to attend your appointment from home, saving you time and money.
Urgent advice: Covid-19 - Asthma
In line with national NHS guidelines, many of our appointments have been moved to telephone appointments. You will receive notification about this.
Access to the hospital is likely to change on a day-day basis as increasing restrictions are put in place to minimise person-person spread of the virus. We recommend you check the home page of the Trust website for the latest update.
The biologics delivery service will continue, but if you routinely attend for this, you may notice a change to the organisation of outpatients. Visits will be kept as brief as possible.
You should continue to take your medication, including prescribed dose of oral steroids, unless otherwise instructed. Abrupt reduction of oral steroids such as prednisolone without medical supervision can be dangerous, and severely worsen asthma control.
You should maintain ready access to, and follow your personalised asthma action plan, as you normally would.
Telephone appointments/consultations
In readiness for a telephone appointment, please have your peak flow meter and medication including inhalers to hand.
If you are unable to be available for the appointment please call the team on 01223 349 410
Useful links:
Current government advice on self-isolation
What we do:
Helping sufferers with this condition requires a multidisciplinary team of professionals to assist with every aspect of severe asthma care. Our team includes nurses, physiotherapists, lung function scientists, a speech and language therapist (to help with throat symptoms), a dietician, a psychologist, a pharmacist, as well as chest doctors, an allergist, ENT specialists and radiologists and our administrators. We also have a respiratory research team.
How the service works:
You may be referred for day case assessment or a clinic review to Addenbrooke's Hospital. A day case assessment may involve seeing several members of the team. The aim is to assess your condition in as much detail as possible, before deciding on treatment changes and follow-up.
You will receive a timetable prior to coming for assessment and our administrator will confirm your attendance with you by telephone the week beforehand. You may have to stop your inhalers before attendance. If you do, we will let you know.
Who we are:
The medical team is led by the consultants Dr Robin Gore, Dr Martin Knolle and Dr Shuaib Nasser. The nursing team is led by Mrs Caroline Owen.
Research
We work closely with other severe asthma centres and the pharmaceutical industry to provide clinical trials in severe asthma. You may be asked to consider participating in a clinical trial.
AccessAble - Clinic 2a
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