[Significance of immunotherapy in treatment of bronchial asthma].

When first used, immunotherapy was applied to treatment of infectious diseases. Its high effectiveness gave an impulse to introduce this method in the treatment of allergic diseases, including bronchial asthma. In contrast to pharmacological treatment which treats only the symptoms in allergies, immunotherapy is presently considered to be the only causative treatment. Several conditions have to be fulfilled to obtain the effect of such treatment. Appropriate patients selection, use of the etiologically correct vaccine and continuing the treatment throughout several seasons are the conditions for the therapeutic success. In nonatopic intrinsic asthma or in atopic asthma complicated by bacterial infections the use of autologic or polyvalent (standard) bacterial vaccine should be considered. Because immunotherapy brings a risk of serious side effects such as anaphylactic reaction, only allergy specialist should be entitled to decide of the introduction of such treatment and to supervise its course.