Asthma clinic referrals

[Lily Dalke]

I'm curious about the alert that comes up when you order a referral to the asthma clinic:

 

"Important notes about co-morbid conditions:

 

1. Send directly to regular Chest Clinic any patients that you believe may also require a bronchoscopy or lung biopsy (e.g. due to abnormal chest x-ray or other clinical reasons)

 

2. The Asthma Clinic can manage asthma occuring with these other conditions: COPD, Bronnchiectasis, Sleep apnea, Rhinitis, GERD, Psychological Issues, or Obesity.

We can also help with differential diagnosis

Please order the following teslers, asthma devices, and other medications t:

1. Complete Pulmonary Function Test (Spirometry, pre and post Bronchodilator, Lung Volumes, and Difusion Capacity

2. Chest X-ray

3. Serum IgE & RAST

4. Consider Cardiac ECHO for dyspnea evaluation

5. Instruct the patient to bring with them all their inhalers, asthma devices and other medications to the clinic visit"

 

Does anyone order any of these tests? It's unclear to me whether all of these are routine things the Asthma Clinic wants us to order - or only for patients with "co-morbid conditions" in which case I wonder what they consider "co-morbid conditions"? Is pregnancy one??

 

If we are supposed to order these tests, anyone know how to order the complete pulmonary function test that they recommend? What about serum IgE? When you type in "RAST" a whole bunch of options come up for animals/dust/food/grass/latex/mold/tree/weeds etc. Do we order all of them? What about the cardiac echo? I don't see anything under that name when I type in "echo-" --could it be the transthoracic echocardiogram?

 

Thanks in advance for any insight anyone can offer!