Maintenance And Reliever Therapy (MART) for young people with asthma

Abstract

Maintenance and reliever therapy (MART) is one device, which serves as both preventer and reliever. In children and young people, the choice is more limited in terms of device and this is called Symbicort MART (SMART). One of the most common modifiable factors for optimal asthma control at any age is adherence to prescribed preventer therapy ( British Thoracic Society(BTS)/Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN), 2019 ). As young patients grow and take increasing responsibility for their own health, perfect adherence can feel impossible for the developing brain (and with this, the ability to effectively analyse risk). As health professionals, it can be easy to focus on the adherence issue as a failure to organise, and to assume all have the capacity to optimally administer a medication twice daily. What we are increasingly learning through the multiple health inequality and psychosocial workstreams is that there are families who are fundamentally less likely to achieve this, even with additional support from their health team, due to an actual or perceived inability to deal with the modifiable factors highlighted by BTS/SIGN.