Asthma deaths are rising in Ireland, and hospitalisations due to the condition remain well above the European Union (EU) average, despite “game-changing” advances in respiratory healthcare.

The benefits of new thinking on management of the condition are yet to be maximised among the estimated 450,000 people who live here with asthma. It is a chronic lung condition in which the airways become inflamed in reaction to various triggers. This affects people’s ability to breathe – and can be fatal for a very small minority.

The provisional figure of 94 deaths last year, says the chief executive of the Asthma Society of Ireland, Eilís Ní Chaithnía, is significantly up from 82 in 2022, which in turn was up from the 60-plus recorded in previous years.

Eilís Ní Chaithnía.

“For the vast majority, it’s very mild, and easily controlled with just periodically using an inhaler,” says Prof Richard Costello, a professor in respiratory medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and respiratory consultant at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. But the type of inhaler, along with when and how it is used, is key to keeping it under control.

[ ‘People are really struggling’: Cost pressures forcing asthma patients to cut back on medication, says Asthma SocietyOpens in new window ]

“One rethinking aspect of asthma is that we are definitively, absolutely, getting rid of the people using their blue inhaler as their tr