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department of Medicine

Section of pulmonary and critical care medicine

Programs and Services - The Asthma Center

Asthma affects 5% of American adults, causing over 600,000 hospitalizations at a cost of $7.2 billion in the United States. Because of the diverse causes of asthma, carefully tailored management is necessary to effectively treat each individual patient.

The Asthma Center at Temple University Hospital provides comprehensive treatment as well as educational programs. The Temple Asthma Center includes both inpatient and outpatient centers. Causative and contributing factors can be eliminated or reduced, compliance can be increased and attacks minimized by educating patients and their families on effective management through medication, therapy, and life-style changes. The Center also has expertise in allergy evaluation and in exercise-induced asthma in athletes.

An extension of the Temple University Hospital Outpatient Asthma Program, the inpatient center is a 4-bed unit that provides intensive medical treatment, respiratory monitoring, and education (through a subspecialist pulmonologist, nurse, and respiratory therapist) resulting in quick (within 48-hours) turnaround. The inpatient educational program includes daily one-on-one directed teaching and videos on disease concepts, medication use, allergy material, dose inhaler techniques, nebulizer use, peak-flow monitoring, etc. This broad, multidisciplinary disease management approach helps shorten hospital stays (normally 4 to 5 days), reduces costs and lowers the number of emergency room visits and re-admissions.