Asthma

Our asthma pharmacology lecture was given by Dr. Boushey, Chief of Allergy and Immunology. Surprisingly, this was the lecture I attended a full year ago when I came to interview at UCSF. I think he's a really awesome lecturer; he has the sort of presence that commands the room. In any case, the projector wasn't working, yet he was able to deliver a really impressive lecture. During the class, he also demonstrated the proper methods of taking different types of inhalers, which I found fascinating. I wonder whether those inhalers were really loaded with albuterol (since you can take quite a few puffs without consequence). He must have tried out four or five different inhalers through the lecture.

When he described environmental factors that exacerbate asthma, he showed this picture:


We also had a lecture by a pathologist describing asthma. His first slide was a black blank slide. He then said, "This is an important slide, illustrating how much most general pathologists know about asthma." It was quite amusing.