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Questions & answers

Ventilation and allergic rhinitis.

Due to a severe disease I have to be ventilated non invasively 24 hour a day, using a nasal mask. Unfortunately I suffer from an allergic rhinitis and consequently I have often problems in breathing with my nose.You can imagine how dreadful and dangerous a closed nose can be for my life! To recover my breathing I use: Rinocidina, Rinazina nasal spray, Actifed. Unfortunately these medicaments seem to have progressively less effectiveness.Could you please help me? What can I do? Are there new products to be used?Thanks.
A.C.
(July 25th, 2001)

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The information given is not sufficient to advise the person. But even with more details it would be difficult to help with therapeutic indications. We could only give names and addresses of Centres to which the person could refer for a clinical evaluation.
F.M.

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The problem arise frequently during nasal ventilation. Moreover the allergy makes this worse. I would suggest a nasal spray with cortisone (es. Flixonase) to be used twice a day. In addition I would suggest the use of Wet nasal spray to humidify the mucosal lining of the nose, three or four times a day. The medicaments reported by the patient must be used only when needed because they may cause a vessel constriction and thus worsen the situation.
E.V.

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Unfortunately the nasal problems are often linked to the continuous use of ventilators. I advise you to 1) ascertain about the presence of a real allergy - if you haven't done it yet - with simple allergy testing: allergy skin tests and total IgE + Alatop or Phadiatop. A correct diagnosis would allow the use of other kind of medicaments (antihistamines, etc)
2) it is always advisable to use a humidifier connected to the ventilator.
A.T.

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Unfortunately, up to now, no one has given me useful answers. No one has made names of other kind of medicaments to be used instead of the usual ones. For all these reasons my problems remains the same.I await to be choked to death.
A.C.

(August, 12th, 2001)

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