Chronic Disease Clinical Respiratory
From http://medicalrepublic.com.au
Posted byTMR Staff
Newer bronchodilators have an edge over older medications for patients with COPD, says Dr Christopher Worsnop.
Bronchodilators are the main inhaler medications used for first-line treatment of COPD.
There are two types of bronchodilators: muscarinic antagonists (which used to be called anticholinergics) and beta agonists.
Long-acting muscarinic antagonistsare called LAMAs and long-acting beta agonists are called LABAs.
The older, short-acting bronchodilators require “multiple puffs, multiple times a day, so that’s why we favour the longer ones”, Dr Christopher Worsnop, a respiratory and sleep physician at Austin Hospital in Melbourne, says.
“We tend to use the muscarinic antagonists first and we prefer to use the long-acting ones because it’s much more convenient for patients to take,” he says.