Talk:Metered-dose inhaler

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[edit] Merger needed

It seems to me that this article, Inhaler, and Asthma inhaler should be merged. They are all covering the same topic. Aleta 05:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Strong Oppose They are not all the same. Metered-dose inhalers (MDIs) deliver, as the name says, a metered dose of medication in aerosol form. A large number of inhalers however - Accuhalers, Diskhalers, Turbohalers, and Clickhalers to give a non-exhaustive list of examples - deliver their contained medication in the form of a fine powder. While certainly the dose delivered is regulated closely by the design and operation of the device, dry powder devices are never, ever referrd to as Metered Dose Inhalers, and to merge as suggested will degrade the value of the article. A total re-write, to explain and expand on the differences which I outline here would, however, be reasonable. If any editor chooses to take this up, it is important in doing so to be very aware of the fact that medications often have totally different names on either side of the Atlantic.--Anthony.bradbury 11:44, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree merger of Asthma inhaler to the non-disease specififc Inhaler.
    • A suggestion was made on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Should Inhaler Become A Disambiguation Page? for inhaler to also cover nasal sprays, which I would strongly oppose - inhalers are, by common understanding & definition, drugs inhaled into the lung. NasalCrom etc are sprays sprayed into the nose whilst sniffing and delivers their drugs to the nose, not the lungs. Nasal sprays require just partial respiratory effort (to sniff in), whereas all inhalers used for asthma should be with full effort (from a deliberate fully expired lung to full total capacity). Furthermore with inhalers the breath should ideally be held for 10 seconds to allow drug deposition (use of spacers as secondary volume is a side issue here), whereas once a nasal spray has been sniffed-in, a person is free to immediately exhale through their mouth.
    • I therefore would view "inhaler" as currently being synonymous with drugs for respiratory conditions.
    • Virtually the same range of inhaled drugs are used in both asthma and COPD, so the direction of merging should be Asthma inhaler into Inhaler.
    • Not all asthma inhalers are aerosol, having instead dry powder in many products and whilst all inhalers deliver a pre-defined fixed dose for each activation, Meter Dose Inhaler (MDI) is a term exclusively reserved in clinical usage for aerosol inhalers. My British National Formulary actually never uses the term "Metered-dose inhaler" on its own, but instead is clearer by stating "Pressurised metered-dose inhaler" or "aerosol inhaler", to distinguish from "dry powder inhaler". Therefore Inhaler (with merged in Asthma inhaler) should remain the main article and Metered-dose inhaler being a smaller subtopic article. David Ruben Talk 13:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Good points have been made. I have no problem with David Ruben's suggestion. (When I made my original proposal, all three articles were talking pretty exclusively about metered-dose inhalers.) Aleta 22:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarifications needed

I was thinking... And thinking... "Asthma Inhaler" is to pinpointed. I think "Respiratory Inhaler" is more appropriate. Anyone else?

--RonEJ 17:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

No (sorry did not see this subsequent thread) - for reasons stated above, "inhaler" is reserved in its use for respiratory conditions and the "Respiratory" prefix is neither required nor commonly used. "Respiratory inhaler" as a term never appears in the BNF or any clinical literature I have ever seen, a quick review of Google (a poor measure true) gives 605 hits for "respiratory inhaler" vs "inhaler" getting 2,810,000. But I do agree that the "asthma" of Asthma inhaler is disease specific and hence I agree with the direction of merging Asthma inhaler into Inhaler. David Ruben Talk 13:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
David, I am still leary by putting all known inhalers into the same basket. I was thinking too much out loud in my quoting of Respiratory Inhaler when my brain did a flip-flop I was thinking more along as "Inhaler (Respiratory)" as a title. Either way it will be difficult to keep the nose detached from the inhaler section, as it is part of the respiratory system and some spacers use masks.
--RonEJ 09:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
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