Severe asthma that was endotracheally intubated 16 times in 20 years

Introduction: Severe asthma is a complex airway disease characterised by multiple aggravating-factors, and frequent comorbidities. Poor asthma control does not always correspond to the severity of airflow obstruction. One cause of disproportionate breathlessness in asthma is dysfunctional breathing/hyperventilation syndrome which is increasingly recognized. Case study: This female individual arrived at our asthma centre for the first time, coming from a primary care site 20 years ago. During the past 20 years she was intubated 16 times. Airway obstruction was never assessed surrounding the acute asthma episodes. Asthma diagnosis was confirmed by spirometry many times during routine visits at the asthma centre, where she never came to our asthma centre during an acute asthma exacerbation. Despite warranting the availability of controller medication with high ICS dose plus LABA, she repeated the episodes of severe dyspnoea requiring endotracheal intubations. Results: At a routine outpatient visit to our asthma centre for claiming her asthma medication, she developed an extreme dyspnoea as it occurred so many times earlier, using accessory respiratory muscles. The modified Borg scale for dyspnoea was 9/10. Pulse oximetry showed 96% O2 saturation breathing at room air. Baseline FEV1 was 1.96 L. Dyspnoea did not improve after 30 minutes of treatment. However, the FEV1 increased 29% to 2.53 L (96% predicted). Relaxation respiratory techniques began and the extreme dyspnoea slowly disappeared. Conclusion: Hyperventilation syndrome was confirmed with a score 32 with the Nijmegen Questionnaire (normal <23). Hyperventilation syndrome could coexist with severe asthma in 47% of cases.