<p>In this journal and other allergy specialty journals, we often read about important scientific breakthroughs with potential to improve the lives of people affected by allergic conditions. This month, we highlight areas where attention to ‘the basics’ is all that is needed to improve the clinical care of people with allergies.</p><p>The first Editor's Choice article explores patterns of adrenaline auto-injector prescribing in England. Adrenaline auto-injectors are medical devices which aim to promptly reverse symptoms of anaphylaxis and potentially prevent fatal outcome. Their design, dosing, indications and effectiveness have all attracted debate and controversy [<span>1, 2</span>]. But since their licensing in 1989 they have become an allergy must-have item and a commercial success story. Although there is considerable uncertainty about dosing, it is likely that the treatment dose for larger, older children and adults should be higher than the dose for younger children. Michaelis et al. show us that in community practice, prescription of inappropriately low dose adrenaline auto-injectors is relatively common [<span>3</span>]. In an analysis of 2 years of prescribing data for England, the authors found over 1700 patients, mainly adults, were prescribed a low-dose (150 μg) adrenaline autoinjector. Using national resuscitation council guidance, they estimated that up to half of all 150 microgram prescriptions may have been underdosed. This adds to the known issue that in many regions there is no availability of 500 microgram adrenaline auto-injectors, meaning that ‘correct’ prescription of 300 microgram devices could also be considered to represent underdosing. Clearly further work is needed to ensure more robust prescribing guidance, but checking a patient's weight and the relevant adrenaline dose before issuing a repeat prescription seems like a relatively simple step for clinical practitioners to make (Figure 1).</p><p>The second article suggesting a need to get the basics right concerns hospital-based documentation of allergy in electronic health records [<span>4</span>]. Qiyu et al. used freedom of information requests to ensure a high rate of response to their survey of public health system hospitals in the United Kingdom. They found widespread evidence of inadequate technological support in hospital systems for documenting known allergies in patients. A very wide variety of electronic reporting systems was used between, and even within, each hospital group. It was not uncommon to find hospitals using electronic systems which simply couldn't capture certain types of allergies—for example, over half of hospital trusts had no category for recording food allergy incidents. In their analyses, Qiyu et al. found associations between inadequate electronic reporting systems and incidents of patients being exposed to known allergens. They also carefully documented cases of harm caused by inadequate documentation at a single hospital trust, where th
{"title":"Getting the Basics Right in Allergy Care","authors":"Robert J. Boyle, Mohamed H. Shamji","doi":"10.1111/cea.70206","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cea.70206","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this journal and other allergy specialty journals, we often read about important scientific breakthroughs with potential to improve the lives of people affected by allergic conditions. This month, we highlight areas where attention to ‘the basics’ is all that is needed to improve the clinical care of people with allergies.</p><p>The first Editor's Choice article explores patterns of adrenaline auto-injector prescribing in England. Adrenaline auto-injectors are medical devices which aim to promptly reverse symptoms of anaphylaxis and potentially prevent fatal outcome. Their design, dosing, indications and effectiveness have all attracted debate and controversy [<span>1, 2</span>]. But since their licensing in 1989 they have become an allergy must-have item and a commercial success story. Although there is considerable uncertainty about dosing, it is likely that the treatment dose for larger, older children and adults should be higher than the dose for younger children. Michaelis et al. show us that in community practice, prescription of inappropriately low dose adrenaline auto-injectors is relatively common [<span>3</span>]. In an analysis of 2 years of prescribing data for England, the authors found over 1700 patients, mainly adults, were prescribed a low-dose (150 μg) adrenaline autoinjector. Using national resuscitation council guidance, they estimated that up to half of all 150 microgram prescriptions may have been underdosed. This adds to the known issue that in many regions there is no availability of 500 microgram adrenaline auto-injectors, meaning that ‘correct’ prescription of 300 microgram devices could also be considered to represent underdosing. Clearly further work is needed to ensure more robust prescribing guidance, but checking a patient's weight and the relevant adrenaline dose before issuing a repeat prescription seems like a relatively simple step for clinical practitioners to make (Figure 1).</p><p>The second article suggesting a need to get the basics right concerns hospital-based documentation of allergy in electronic health records [<span>4</span>]. Qiyu et al. used freedom of information requests to ensure a high rate of response to their survey of public health system hospitals in the United Kingdom. They found widespread evidence of inadequate technological support in hospital systems for documenting known allergies in patients. A very wide variety of electronic reporting systems was used between, and even within, each hospital group. It was not uncommon to find hospitals using electronic systems which simply couldn't capture certain types of allergies—for example, over half of hospital trusts had no category for recording food allergy incidents. In their analyses, Qiyu et al. found associations between inadequate electronic reporting systems and incidents of patients being exposed to known allergens. They also carefully documented cases of harm caused by inadequate documentation at a single hospital trust, where th","PeriodicalId":10207,"journal":{"name":"Clinical and Experimental Allergy","volume":"56 1","pages":"4-6"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cea.70206","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145854711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}