Prescribing for asthmatic children in primary care

for not following the national guidelines on asthma management. 3We agree that there is a problem of inadequate dissemination of guidelines, as we are aware that many physicians in need cannot obtain the guidelines.This might be overcome if the guidelines were available as a supplement in one of the leading Saudi Medical Journals, such as this journal.Another way of making them available is on the internet.The British Guidelines on Asthma Management, for example, are easily available because they are provided as a supplement with the journal Thorax. 4owever, in our opinion the national guidelines 3 need clarification in several areas in order to be applicable.For example, age of children is not defined; clear steps for objectively diagnosing asthma are not defined.As for availability of free medicines as a factor in suboptimal management, we believe that our study showed that this was not an important contributing factor.This is because the study was conducted in a center where almost all of the recommended asthma medications were available and yet not prescribed.