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Updates to the British Thoracic Society (BTS) asthma guidelines have been recently highlighted by Turner and colleagues. 1 2 To our concern, the content on physiotherapy interventions has not been revised or updated since the 2006 version.
We reviewed the contents of the new BTS guidelines relevant for physiotherapists. The timescale for literature search indicates that the relevant section was last updated in February 2006, with coverage in Medline extending from 1996 to 2005.
Thus, we searched PubMed for English language papers published between January 2006 and December 2010 and found 32 indexed as randomised controlled trials. In the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews we found updates or revisions to all cited documents, with those updated in 2004 and 2005 and not quoted in the guideline.
A corresponding document, not referred to in the BTS guidelines, the joint BTS and the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Respiratory Care (ACPRC) Guidelines for the Physiotherapy Management of the Adult, Medical, Spontaneously Breathing Patient, with a section on physiotherapy interventions in adults with asthma, was published in Thorax in 2009. 3 The authors searched multiple databases (with...