Managing Rhinitis Symptoms: An Ongoing Process

Rhinitis Patient Management

Once your patient has received a detailed clinical evaluation and the appropriate testing to determine their individual allergen sensitizations, you can begin to piece together an allergy management plan tailored to their specific needs. As there is currently no cure for Allergic Rhinitis (AR), management begins with avoidance of relevant allergens and environmental triggers for both perennial and seasonal allergies. Reducing exposure is one of the primary means of managing non-severe symptoms.¹

In patients with moderate to severe disease that did not respond to oral or topical treatment, it is recommended that those patients be referred for consideration of immunotherapy.²

Well established clinical guidelines for the management of rhinitis can help you create a plan tailored to your patient’s specific needs:

UK Guidelines: British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology (BSACI). Clin Exp Allergy. 2008;38:1-42 >

Patient Education - A Powerful Tool

Communicating with, and teaching patients and their caregivers how to manage their rhinitis symptoms can have a profound impact on their daily quality of life. Teaching patients how to avoid known allergens—e.g., avoid having pets, use an air filtration system, bed covers, and acaricides (chemical agents that kill dust mites)—has the potential to lessen or even alleviate the clinical symptoms associated with their condition.¹

Education may consist of a plan that entails how to avoid their triggers, proper use of standard medications, and potential referral to a specialist if the originally selected therapies prove unsuccessful in managing symptoms.

Create an action plan for your patients suffering from allergic diseases >

Teach your patients how to avoid their personal triggers >

Monitoring, Reevaluation, and Further Testing

Once you are confident in your diagnosis of allergic rhinitis, it may help to investigate the patient’s other conditions. In patients with allergic rhinitis, you may want to pay particular attention to atopic dermatitis, sleep-disordered breathing, conjunctivitis, rhinosinusitis, and otitis media.^1,4 There are also strong associations between rhinitis and asthma, with as many as 80% of patients suffering from both.^4-6 Considering all diseases, disorders, and allergies may help you gain some efficiencies as you look to reevaluate the management plan you had in place for allergic rhinitis.

It may also be necessary to reevaluate your initial management plan if it appears that exposure reduction alone is not satisfactory. For those patients, specific immunotherapy (SIT) may be beneficial. Before deciding on SIT, it is critical to the success of therapy that the primary IgE sensitizing source be identified. Fortunately, you can use allergen component testing to help provide the information needed to choose a treatment.³

Could testing with allergen components help you identify your patients allergic triggers?

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Conditions & Diseases

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Tests

Diagnostic tests give reliable results that support primary care physicians as well as specialists in providing optimal patient management.