Asthmatics no longer have to rely on drugs alone for their treatment. British scientists have developed drug-free treatment that helps asthma patients breathe easier. The therapy, known as bronchial thermoplasty, uses tiny probes on wires placed inside the lungs which emit radio waves a treatment that burns off the tissue that clogs the airways of asthmatics, leaving them wheezing and short of breath, significantly cuts the number of attacks they experience compared to patients treated only with drugs. More than five million Britons suffer from asthma, including 1.4 million children. It causes 70,000 hospital admissions and 1,400 deaths each year. It found those patients had around ten fewer asthma attacks per year than those not given the treatment and was free of their symptoms for an extra 86 days per year after treatment.

Doctors sedate patients and thread a bronchoscopea lighted catheter through the nose or throat and into the lungs. A wire basket on the tip is inflated to touch the airway walls, and radiofrequency waves are beamed through those wires. However, doctors warn the long-term risks of the technique remain unknown and it cannot cure asthma.
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