New European Guidelines for Occupational Asthma

These new evidence-based guidelines made the following general recommendations
1) A comprehensive diagnostic approach considering the individual specific aspects is recommended.
2) Early recognition and diagnosis is necessary for timely and appropriate preventative measures.
3) A stratified medical screening strategy and surveillance programme should be applied to at-risk workers. This is a new recommendation compared with previous reviews and also recommends regular skin prick tests or specific IgE for biological agent exposed workers.   4) Whenever possible,removing exposure to the causative agent should be achieved, as it leads to the best health outcome. If this is not possible, reduction is the second best option, whereas respirators are of limited value.
5) Exposure elimination should be the preferred primary prevention approach.

References

	Baur X, Sigsgaard T, Aasen TB, Burge PS, Heederik D, Henneberger P, Maestrelli P, Rooyackers J, Schlunssen V, Vandenplas O, Wilken D on behalf of the ERS Task Force on the Management of Work-related Asthma, Guidelines for the management of work-related asthma, Eur Respir J, 2012;39:529-545,

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