How to tell if your asthma inhaler is empty

[watervole]

 A problem that plagues asthma sufferers (including myself) is how you know if your inhaler still has medication in it.  There's no indicator; the medication is almost tasteless and has no colour.  They continue 'working' when all the medication is gone (or at a level that is too low to be effective)

I've seen suggestions that they are out of medication when the cannister floats, but apparently that's not accurate. 

I've decided to tackle this by weight.

A full Salmerterol inhaler (cylinder only) weights 21 grams on my kitchen scales.  1 dose = 25micrograms medication + 125 milligrams propellant.

Each inhaler has 120 actuations.  This gives a weight loss of 15 grams before the cannister is effectively empty.

So, when my inhaler weights 6g, then I will know it is empty.
 

I found a handy medical site that already had the figures for Ventolin.

A Ventolin (Salbutamol) inhaler weighs 37g when full and 25g when empty

 

Salamol - my new reliever in 2023) weights 16gm (cannister only) when full. A full Salamol® inhaler (inc all bits including cap) weighs 26g, and an empty one weighs 17g. (cannister only will weight 7g when empty)

 

Hopefully, I'm not the only person who will find this useful.

Comments

[autopope]

Can you get your GP to prescribe a disc inhaler/accuhaler instead? That's what I use for salbutamol delivery and it's great.

Instead of an aerosol it's a dry powder inhaler. (Very fine, non-irritating powder, I should add -- it's designed for asthmatics!) Like an ancient Kodak Disc camera, you push a wee lever to rotate a new disk into position, which punctures its shell: then you inhale through the nozzle. A side-effect of this is that it has a visible dose counter behind a window, so you can see how many doses you've got left at a glance.

[watervole]

Unfortunately, any form of dry powder inhaler is pretty much instant death for me.

I lose my voice. (people who've known me a long time will remember the years when I had to carry a notebook everywhere I went as I could rarely speak more than a couple of sentences.)

Same goes for all steroid inhalers of any kind.

I've tried many different ones over the years.

[bugshaw]

I remember the Clanger whistle...

[watervole]

LOL, I'd forgotten that. I used to handle most phone calls that way.

[aunty_marion]

Ooh! Interesting. I'm the opposite when it comes to *steroid* inhalers. Ventolin aerosol, fine. Becotide (beclometasone) aerosol - helium squeak. And they keep discontinuing the dry powder versions every few years, so the GP & pharmacist have to hunt for an alternative for me.

[watervole]

How strange.

So, put us both on inhaled steroids and we'd hit the opposite ends of human vocal range!

(I go very low and horse before the voice conks out totally)

I can't take inhaled steriods in any form, powder or inhaler.

[autopope]

Right. Well, whatever works for you.

(I'm borderline asthmatic -- certain things set me off: mold spores and tobacco smoke, mostly, but I'm finding ventolin also gives symptomatic relief from the post-covid dry coughing. Synchronizing the aerosol dose with inhalation and not spraying it all over the roof of my mouth was hard for me, but the powder inhalers work wonderfully well.

[watervole]

I'm really glad they work for you.

Interesing about the Covid cough. I'll remember that if I catch it again.