Investigators: Gasping for Help

Is a health care product used by millions of adults as well as children putting them at risk of being hospitalized… even dying? Some patients claim it is.

This year roughly 52 million prescriptions will be written for this product. For people with asthma it can literally make the difference between life and death. But right now, some patients are wondering if they can really count on this product when they need it most.

The small talk that comes at the end of the school day means so much more after you’ve watched your kid turn blue. Rochelle Barthel knows all about that.

“I didn’t know if he would have been with us.” She said.

For one terrifying moment about a year ago Barthel thought her son Jack had taken his last breath.

“He’s squeaking out the words, I can’t breathe, I cant breathe.” Jack said, “my throat really hurted.”

Jack was having an asthma attack so Rochelle reached for his rescue inhaler and gave it a squeeze. She says it didn’t make a difference. She squeezed it again. Still no difference she said, in fact it was getting worse By now jack was wheezing and coughing so much that he started to vomit.

“I could see in his eyes, he knew something was really, really, wrong." “It’s very scary." Jessica Perez Cajina knows that same frightening feeling. “It’s like someone smothering you with a pillow and you can’t breathe.” Her attack came while she was at work. She grabbed her lifeline and squeezed. She showed FOX 9, “like this one, it’s not spraying.”

You can imagine her panic. "I knew right then my asthma was going to be worse the next couple of days and I ended up in the emergency room," she said. Darlene Lamere is another person with asthma. She says the new products make her symptoms worse. "It makes your chest much tighter"

These cases raise a serious question: is there a problem with the inhalers millions of Americans rely on to rescue them from an asthma attack?

Since the beginning of this year, all albuterol inhalers are required to be made with a new kind of propellant called HFA. They no longer contain chloroflourocarbons or CFC because they can damage the earth’s ozone layer.

Barthel says, “It’s not a can of hairspray, we’re not doing it for looks, it’s our lives.” A lot of people are complaining the new inhalers just don’t work as well as the old ones.

Darlene Lamere says, “You’re basically telling 40 million people we don’t care if you live or die.”

There’s even a website called www.savecfcinhalers.org filled with hundreds of horror stories devoted to bringing back the old CFC inhalers.

Researchers say the new inhalers are every bit as good for treating asthma as the old ones it’s just that the spray comes out a little slower and has a different feel to it, so patients don't believe they're getting the instant relief they need. The new ones also can have a tendency to clog.

Barthel remembers, “He was panicked and I was terrified.” She says luckily she had an old CFC inhaler to give Jack. It worked. Perez-Cajina says fortunately she had a device called a nebulizer in her car to help when her inhaler clogged during that attack at work.

Professor Don Uden from the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy says, “Number one issue, are they using it properly, how often do they clean it?”

There are four different brands of the new inhalers, all require frequent cleaning so they don’t clog. This one has a reminder on the box but it's easy to miss. Besides a lot of people just carry around the canister and they don't always mention cleaning on the label.

Professor Uden says, “If their health care provider or their pharmacist is not telling them that they need to be washed then it could be a problem."

We wondered what are patients told when they pick up the new HFA inhalers at the drug store? Is there a difference from the old type? No not really. The FOX 9 Investigators went to ten local pharmacies and asked the question whether there was a difference in how a patient should use the new inhalers only three mentioned the importance of regular cleaning.

We asked at one location,“There is no difference in what I need to do? The employee responded, “No, just make sure you’re not using the old one.”

Another location, “No, people do the same thing, its just not using the aerosols that are bad for the environment.”

But even with regular cleaning, people like Perez-Cajina aren’t convinced the new inhalers are as reliable as the old ones.

She said, “even if you wash it weekly it’s not good enough. It doesn’t spray right through the pin sized hole.”

And do all the kids who take inhalers to school in case of an attack at practice or during gym class know about the need to wash the canisters?

Barthel says, “I’m always worried about whether it will work.”

Professor Uden says, “A parent hopefully would teach them they need to wash it, they need to bring it home. Is that realistic in this day and age? It might not be.

The cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the new inhalers has some patients fearing they won't