It is surprising to say the least that, although the two inquiries into asthma deaths published recently in Thorax^1 2 made the point that most asthma deaths occurred outside hospital (the Welsh study commented on the "relative rarity" of deaths in hospital), neither addressed the question as to whether more prompt admission to a hospital with respiratory intensive care facilities could have prevented some, or even many, of the domestic deaths.

The Respiratory Unit at the Northern General Hospital in Edinburgh first addressed that question as long ago as 1968³ when it inaugurated a self-admission scheme for patients known by the unit to be subject to life threatening attacks of asthma, whereby the often long delays inherent in conventional admission procedures were bypassed with the willing cooperation of their general practitioners. The scheme was more fully described in 1975⁴ and reports on 10 year and 15 year reviews of its progress were published . . . [Full text of this article]