printk in interrupt handler

I am writing a device driver that responds to interrupts on my custom device. I have a user-space application that talks to this driver. I am debugging the user space code using gdb. If I place a breakpoint in my user code at the first instruction that should be executed after receipt of an interrupt, I get my breakpoint. Within my driver I have printk's placed in the handler and in the blocked read instruction that would give me additional info about the source of the interrupt, irq status register etc, byt these printk's never appear. Obviously since the blocked I/O releases, these instructions must be getting executed. Are these printk commands not flushed due to the debugger's influence? Is there a way for me to flush them more quickly so that I may view them with dmesg (or looking at the messages file)?

TIA

Best regards,
David Stroupe
Keyed-Up Software