Canada has one of the highest incidences of the
chronic inflammatory airway disease in the world. As
many as three million Canadians suffer from asthma.
The disease is most common in childhood and occurs
in approximately seven to 10 per cent of all
children. About 20 children and 500 adults die from
asthma each year.
People
with asthma have extra sensitive or hyper-responsive
airways. The airways react by narrowing and becoming
obstructed when they are irritated, making it
difficult for air to move in and out. Wheezing,
coughing and chest tightness makes it a struggle for
asthma sufferers to catch their breath.
Medications are the key treatment; most people with
asthma control their symptoms by taking many
medications on a daily basis. Now it may be possible
to have the condition treated with an outpatient
procedure, a surgical way of keeping the airways
open, reducing the need for many of those drugs.
Working with Asthmatix (a venture capital company
from Mountain View , California ), St. Joseph 's
Healthcare researchers were the first to examine in
humans whether this new technique, bronchial
thermoplasty, could be effectively and safely used.
