Original Article. Improving the Inhalation Technique in Patients with Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases

The study aimed to assess the inhalation technique of patients with bronchial asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) via an objective method and to evaluate the effect of training in patients with incorrect technique. Тhe inhalation technique of 120 patients with obstructive pulmonary disease was tested. The patients were divided into two groups: using metered dose inhalers (MDI) - 34 patients (28%) and dry powered inhalers (DPI) - 86 patients (72%). The most frequent mistakes in the MDIgroup were short duration of the inhalation (55.88%) and bad synchronization between activating the canister and the inhalation (29.41%). For the DPIgroup, the inhalation was not forceful enough (48.84%) and the short duration of the inhalation (12.79%). Patients claiming to have good inhalation technique accounted for 97%of those in the MDIgroup, and 96.5%of those in the DPIgroup. There were two patients (5.88%) with correct inhalation technique in the MDIgroup at their first attempt, and 31 patients (36.05%) in the DPIgroup. We found that in the MDIgroup there wasasignificant reduction in the number of mistakes (p<0.001). In the DPIgroup, such correlation was not found but during visit 2 there were no patients with more than 1 mistake. Correcting poor inhalation technique led to reduction of the number of mistakes during inhalation.