A lot of inhalers are prescribed and carried for "emergency" type situations, where you have an asthma attack and literally can't breathe and need the meds in your respiratory system immediately. So if you never had a severe enough attack to need it, you might never have used it. Better than having the attack and not having the inhaler.
Our patients that get allergy injections carry epinephrine in auto-injectors for the same reason... the chances that they will go into anaphylactic shock after a shot are slim, but if they do and don't get something in their system to fight it quick enough, the results could be fatal. A lot of patients don't like carrying them but it's better to have it if you need it than the other way around.
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