Do patients correctly use steroid nose spray? A patient-reported survey
of the nasal spray technique and patient compliance
Abstract
Objectives; To investigate spray technique and compliance among patients
using steroid nasal spray. Design: Patient-reported survey Setting;
Single centre study- a tertiary care hospital Participants: 100
participants (1 excluded) Main outcome measures 1) Nasal spray technique
2) Patient compliance Results: Out of 99 participants included in this
study only one patient used steroid nose spray with a completely correct
spray technique. Only 40% of patients received guidance instructions
from the prescriber about the spray technique. 70% of patients reported
using their spray regularly while 14% and 16% reported using mostly
and sometimes respectively. 53% of patients were found using the
correct dosage of the spray while 34% of patients were using incorrect
dose and 13% cases dosage was unknown. Conclusions: Wrong spray
technique is extremely common and can be easily corrected. Patient
compliance can also be improved further. This survey emphasizes the
importance of giving written and verbal instructions about the use of
spray to the patients. We recommend following the written instructions
for the use of steroid nasal spray from “British Society for Allergy
and Clinical Immunology” or/and video tutorial from “asthma.org.uk-
how to use nasal spray”