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BSACI egg allergy guideline
from Issue 37
BSACI egg allergy guideline comes of age
Sue Leech
Paediatric Allergy Consultant, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
The Standards of Care Committee have recently updated their 2010 Guideline for the management of egg allergy. You can read it in the October issue of Clinical and Experimental Allergy and on the BSACI website www.bsaci.org/guidelines/bsaciguidelines/egg-allergy-2021. This guideline has been a long time in production. It was one of the first guidelines which had significant input from the patient groups, Anaphylaxis Campaign and Allergy UK. They reviewed our section of topics and suggested additions, such as breastfeeding infants with egg allergy, labelling, cross reactivity between different species of egg and cross reactivity between egg and chicken, management of egg allergy in nurseries and schools and the psychological and social implications of egg allergy.
Our allergy dieticians, Isabel Skypala and Heidi Ball were keen to include guidance on home introduction of egg into the diet of children outgrowing egg allergy. So this section was expanded. There are plenty of case examples and patient information leaflets in the online appendix. The guideline includes a 9 step egg introduction ladder, colour coded to match the 3 stage classification of egg containing foods (which is similar to the egg ladder in the 2010 guideline). Isabel expanded the section on egg allergy in adult patients. We get a lot of enquiries about immunising egg allergic children. Mich LaJeunesse updated the section on immunisations and included a section on rabies immunisation. Sarah Heath, paediatric allergy dietician, wrote a section on egg allergy in schools and nurseries, whilst Polly James and Karen Murphy, paediatric allergy psychologists, wrote the section on psychological and social implications of egg allergy. We hope you enjoy using the new guideline and find it helpful. The ladder and table of egg containing foods look good when printed out in colour. The appendices with the case examples are well worth reading and we hope you find the patient information leaflets useful.
