How To Tell If You Got Your Dose From Spiriva Handihaler

The Spiriva Handihaler is a dry powder inhaler, with the powder contents contained inside a capsule.

To use, you place one capsule into the Handihaler device, depress a button to pierce the capsule with a needle, and then inhale the powder released from the capsule through the mouthpiece.

Dry powder inhalers, like the Spiriva Handihaler, utilize a very small amount of powder, and often, it can be difficult to know whether or not you've actually inhaled anything after breathing in.^[1]

In fact, the prescribing information for Spiriva contains an image showing just how little powder is contained in one capsule:^[2]

You probably won't 'feel' the powder you are inhaling when taking a dose from the Spiriva Handihaler.

The best way to tell you inhaled all the powder from the Handihaler is, after taking a dose, open the mouthpiece and tip out the used capsule onto a dark surface or darkly-colored paper towel to see if there appears to be an excess of white powder.

If there is, you may not be using the inhaler correctly or breathing in hard enough.

It is important to note that there will likely be a small amount of white powder residue that has built-up if you haven't cleaned the inhaler awhile, but any residue you may see should be discernable from a larger amount of powder that would be left from one capsule if you didn't inhale the entire dose.

Another important thing to look out for is an audible 'rattle' noise when you are breathing in a dose from the Handihaler. You must breathe in fairly strongly to ensure you are getting a dose, and when you do, you should hear the capsule rattle around.

"Breathe in deeply until your lungs are full. You should hear or feel the SPIRIVA capsule vibrate (rattle)."

If you don't hear a rattle, you may not be breathing in strongly enough.

Additionally, the manufacturer recommends breathing in 2 times from the same Spiriva capsule to ensure you get the full dose.

If you still are having problems with your Handihaler, talk to your doctor or local pharmacist and they should be able to help you out!

Since we are talking about Spiriva, you may want to consider switching to the Spiriva Respimat if you don't like using the dry-powder inhaler.

Spiriva is now available as Spiriva Respimat, which contains the same active ingredient ((tiotropium bromide) but in a more traditional looking inhaler.

Spiriva Respirmat uses a slow-moving mist as opposed to a powder and you don't need to breathe in nearly as hard to inhale a dose. It also doesn't use capsules at all, but rather has a cartridge that contains one month of doses before you need a new device.^[3]