Dr Scott Commins on Expanding Awareness of Food Allergy Manifestations to Other Specialists

There are greater awareness efforts taking place to educate other specialists on referring patients who are having suspected allergic reactions to the appropriate allergists, who can do a fuller evaluation, said Scott P. Commins, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine, at the University of North Carolina.

Transcript

What efforts are taking place to educate other specialties, such as pediatricians, internists, emergency providers, and others, about best practices in food allergy prevention and treatment?

I think there’s a lot of awareness going on whether it’s through the Food Allergy Research and Education Group or even coming out through the allergy journals, but then equally trying to get awareness to physicians who are on the frontline whether it’s adult food allergy or childhood. Mainly with the idea of “If you suspect this is happening, it’s totally appropriate to refer these folks and don’t even necessarily need to do the evaluation in your office.” I think most allergists are more than pleased to do the full evaluation in their office, where we have the full capability to do skin testing, we’re proficient with the bloodwork, and it saves, often, confusion about this.

I think the other aspect of this is broadening the idea of what we kind of define of food allergy as. So, empowering our gastroenterologists or dermatologists to think about either belly pain or say, hives, respectively, as potential manifestations of food allergy. Go ahead and make that referral and [we’d] be happy to see those patients.