The Community Children’s Nursing Team at Tameside General Hospital has asked for our help to provide a Fractional Exhaled Nitric Oxide (FENO) machine for use with their young patients with asthma.
Asthma is a common condition affecting one in 11 children in the UK. In addition to coughing, wheezing and breathlessness, asthma can leave kids feeling tired all the time and at greater risk of stress and anxiety. Severe asthma attacks can be life threatening.
Children and young people in Tameside experience significantly higher levels of deprivation and poverty than the rest of England and are more likely to experience a wide range of health problems, including poor nutrition and chronic disease. Tameside has the highest emergency hospital admission rates in England for children with asthma, making it vitally important that they have all the right equipment available to diagnose, monitor and treat it.
FENO devices measure fractional exhaled nitric oxide in the breath of patients. Nitric oxide is a biomarker for asthma, which provides an indication of the level of inflammation in the lungs. The test produces a FENO score, which gives a value to the level of inflammation and can be used to aid in the diagnosis of asthma and in the ongoing monitoring of chronic asthma.
The new FENO machine will help the medical team to monitor the progression of the disease and enable them to control and treat it appropriately. The equipment will benefit around 250 children a year.
