Resources

This is a high-level summary of what the new BTS/NICE/SIGN Asthma: diagnosis monitoring and chronic asthma management guideline means for you as a primary healthcare professional and what steps you need to take to implement it effectively.

The PCRS Integrated Care Board (ICB), Health Board and Trust toolkit aims to support healthcare commissioners across the UK to implement the new BTS/NICE/SIGN asthma guideline effectively and ensure the best possible care and outcome for all their asthma patients.

New BTS/SIGN/NICE Guideline on Asthma: diagnosis, monitoring and chronic asthma management 2024

Maintenance and reliever therapy (MART) is a treatment for asthma where a single combined inhaler is used for both maintenance and reliever purposes, instead of having separate preventer (brown) and reliever (blue) inhalers. 

For an inhaler to be effective, the correct drug must be prescribed and the device must be used correctly.

This document outlines a consensus recommendation based on the best available evidence and expert opinion. Its purpose is to provide guidance on a safe approach within the limitations of the evidence and devices currently available. It will be important that these recommendations are regularly reviewed and there is careful and close monitoring of patients whose care is based on this guidance, especially in younger age groups.

In this position statement we outline the background, key issues and provide key steps on how to make a firm diagnosis of asthma in this important group.

2024 marked a pivotal change in the management of asthma in the UK with the publication of a joint British Thoracic Society (BTS), National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) guideline. This guideline, ‘Asthma: diagnosis, monitoring and chronic asthma management’, has the potential to be the paradigm shift that is needed to improve asthma care in the UK.In the 2024 BTS/NICE/SIGN guideline1 there is a clear statement that says: