i find it really premature to put someone on long-term medication for one asthma attack unless a very thorough exam was done.

I had Asthma in Canada for years and it definitely related to smog and second hand smoke. The long-term drugs always had unwanted side effects with me. I would either need them more when I was exercising, or the steroids would cause me to lose my voice or start coughing uncontrollably.

I had a really bad attack in October after some idiotic kids on an indoor train platform practically hot boxed a large area. I went to the pharmacist in HB and asked for ventolin since I had been wheezing for 15 minutes by then. I used it, it cost me 18chf, but it did the job. I haven't had an attack since. It seems kind of pointless to keep using a drug on a daily basis when attacks happen so rarely. The long-term bronchodilators have also been implicated in a few recent deaths, but I guess nobody knew that in 2009. (straight from the dogmatic site of webMD: http://www.webmd.com/asthma/guide/as...ronchodilators)

At the bottom of the article:

"Advair, Symbicort, Serevent, and Foradil inhalers include long-acting bronchodilators that are used twice a day. Long-acting bronchodilators may increase the risk of death from asthma when used regularly without an inhaled steroid. For details, see their black-box warning."