Katie Gray
Hello my name is katie gray and i’m a pharmacy student at the fish college of pharmacy at ut tyler and today i will be presenting to you your new medication albuterol so what is albuterol albuterol is going to be the generic name of some brand names you may have heard which would be ventalin pro air pro air respi-click acuneb pro ventino or broventino hfa um
These can be used as either an inhaler so something like this or as something that would be used in a nebulizer like what you might see in a hospital but you may have it at your home as well so why are you taking this medication it’s very commonly used in asthma so when you have acute symptoms like bad asthma attacks or an exacerbation so when it’s uh when you’re
Having attacks more often you may need to use your inhaler more often also for exercise induced asthma attacks as a preventative measure you could have it if you have copd and in some rare cases it is used for hyperkalemia which means high blood potassium so how should you use this medication you should always follow your doctor’s directions on how many puffs
You need to take and how many times per day as this may vary based on your condition for asthma that is caused by exercise i would recommend that you take two puffs 15 to 20 maybe 30 minutes before exercising that way it will get into your system before you start playing or exercising so what i want you to do right now for me is take your inhaler if you have one
Like this and check on the back there should be a dose counter and you want to look at this dose counter and you’re going to want to see how many are left that’ll tell you how close you are usually they start with 200 doses and you may get down to like 198 that may be what you start with now as you get lower and lower that means you’re getting close to being
Out so you need to remember to order your refill also i’m going to show you real quick some little tips on how i use my inhaler so you’re going to take off this cap which always needs to stay on when you’re not using it okay if you haven’t used it in a while you go ahead and prime it which is to say you’re going to puff it away from your face so point it away
From you and click it twice you’re just getting rid of extra of the knot medicine just to get it out of the inhaler so that’s if you haven’t used it for a while if you’re using it every day you don’t have to worry about that okay now what you’re going to do is take a deep breath out for like about five seconds like once you’ve done that hold up the hold up the
Medicine hold it up to your mouth this mouthpiece and make sure you make a tight seal around it and take a deep breath for about five to ten seconds as long as you can and try to pull the air deep into your chest and then hold that in your chest as long as you can about five to ten seconds try to count like even on your fingers up to five and then go ahead and
Breathe out for the same amount of time just like breathe out slowly like okay so you couldn’t see my fingers but i was counting out that i was breathing out for five seconds breathing in slowly and out slowly is going to help make sure that the medicine gets to stay on your lungs as long as possible so that’s going to help keep it nice and keep your medicated
And keep making sure it’s in where it belongs when you’re done always remember to replace that cap and put it back in a cool dry storage place and we’ll talk about storage again here in just a little bit but that’s the basic use of your inhaler so if you miss a dose if you miss the dose you can take it as soon as you remember it if it’s within you know an hour or
So past your dose if you have scheduled dosing now you can take any remaining doses in the day at evenly spaced intervals so if you take a dose that’s a couple hours late then you don’t want to take your next dose that was due you know really soon you might need to take that spaced out further so if it was due in four hours but you’re now just two hours away
From that dose you could take another one in four hours if you’re taking a dose every four hours if that makes sense we don’t ever want to take two doses at the same time if you’re really close to your next dose you should go ahead and wait until your next dose and take it then and just don’t take two doses at the same time because that can increase risk of any
Kind of complications so we don’t want bad things to happen like that the side effects that can occur that would be considered common are nausea throat and sinus infections throat irritation upper respiratory tract infections tremor and nervousness for the first few like the infections one way we can work to prevent those is by rinsing your mouth every time you
Take your inhaler and when you use it go ahead and once you’ve finished using it you can rinse your mouth out with some water or a drink and just spit that out and that’ll help just cleanse that from your throat okay so what should you tell your healthcare provider before taking this medication so these are some medicines that don’t work very well or have uh
Interactions with your new albuterol inhaler so you need to tell your doctor right away if they don’t know that you’re on these medications includes non-selective beta blockers this could be propranolol natalolol timalom pindolol so a lot of the laws it’s not all of them so you might be on something that’s called a selective beta blocker and that might not be
A problem but you do need to bring this up with your doctor when you see them also things that could be a problem would be an maoi or tricyclic antidepressant so a common tricyclic would be amtriptyline also you could be on digoxin or any of the diuretics any of these could interact with your new albuterol inhaler so those are things you would want to talk with
Your doctor about you need to talk to your doctor about how often you’ve been experiencing asthma attacks and also if you’ve been hospitalized for any of your asthma exacerbations so these bad asthma attacks recently and how many times you’ve been hospitalized for these okay so where should you store that medication something i was talking about earlier we always
Make sure we get the cat back on the medicine when we finish using it and we want to keep it in a cool and dry place away from direct sunlight don’t leave it in a hot car i know we need to take it with us but leaving in a hot car could result in it messing up the medicine or even blowing up the little canister since it’s got pressure in there you’re going to avoid
Keeping it in the bathroom because that’s going to be warm and wet so we want dry and cool uh one big tip is always keep that cap on the inhaler and always wipe the mouthpiece of your inhaler after each use this will prevent any kind of fuzz or just germs and things crud building up on the outside and uh that’ll just help keep it as clean as possible all right
I want to thank you for listening to uh my counseling video here again i’m katie gray and i’m a student pharmacist from the ben and matey fish college of pharmacy thank you
Transcribed from video
Albuterol (Ventolin) Patient Counseling Video By Drug Information Specialist
