Can I Use an Expired Flovent Inhaler

can i use an expired flovent inhaler

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Asthma maintenance inhalers don’t spend much time resting on the shelf of your medicine cabinet or wherever else it is you choose to keep them. Your asthma rescue inhaler may be prone a lot more often, but if you’re using a maintenance inhaler, you’re going to have it in your hands on a daily basis. Logic would suggest that you should be much more aware of when that inhaler is going to expire, and most people will be. The Flovent inhaler is one of the most common maintenance inhalers, and if you’re using it as you should you’ll know how long it should last. But can I use an expired Flovent inhaler?

Well, for starters nothing is ever going to stop you from lifting it up to your mouth and inhaling doses if they are remaining in the inhaler. But the questions with can I use an expired Flovent inhaler are these ones; will the medication still be effective, and is it safe to inhale doses of it when the medication is expired? The answer is that it is not unsafe to use an expired inhaler, but that you shouldn’t by relying on the medication to work as effectively as it did before the expiry date came and went.

Discussing how do I use a Flovent inhaler is going to be a different talk for a different time, and if you’re reading this it’s more likely that you’ve already been using yours for a good long while. If you’ve got an expired or near-expiring inhaler then that’s a safe assumption. So instead we’ll continue to focus on a detailed overview of whether or not it’s okay to use an expired asthma inhaler.

Look for the 2

The next thing to mention with can I use an expired Flovent inhaler is to say that all inhalers will actually have two expiry dates. The one asthma maintenance inhalers will be referencing most of the time will be the one on the label, and the standard expiration date is 1-year from when the medication was dispensed at the pharmacy and that label was printed. The second expiration date will be on the box the inhaler came in, and if there’s a discrepancy between the two and it’s more than a month or two either way then you might want to speak to the pharmacist again.

In the event that your medication is way past its expiry date then you may find that the inhaler won’t even load the remaining doses properly. If so it’s time to get ‘rid’ of it, but as is always the case with Rx products you need to do so within the guidelines for disposing of expired medication responsibly. We’ll go ahead and guess that no one is going to try and flush an asthma inhaler down the toilet. But responsible disposal may well be a part of can I use an expired Flovent inhaler.


IMPORTANT NOTE: The above information is intended to increase awareness of health information and does not suggest treatment or diagnosis. This information is not a substitute for individual medical attention and should not be construed to indicate that use of the drug is safe, appropriate, or effective for you. See your health care professional for medical advice and treatment.


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