How a new test is improving asthma care

It’s suspected that 30 per cent of 5.4 million patients currently diagnosed with asthma in the UK have been misdiagnosed. The NHS spends £1.1 billion on asthma treatment and management annually, with 90 per cent of this cost going directly on medication, including the prescription of steroid inhalers. In this episode, we hear about a programme to improve the diagnosis and management of asthma within primary care, involving the spread of a breathing test called FeNO. This test looks at how much nitric oxide – a type of gas – is in your breath when you breath out and can show the level of inflammation in the lungs. The test is easy to do, you simply breath into a tube - and it takes less than a minute. FeNO testing is a key piece in the diagnostic jigsaw and can help improve care for people with asthma.