IS IT ASTHMA?
 
Asthma is a major cause of illness and even death throughout the world and there is evidence that the number of people with asthma have increased considerably over the past 20 years, especially in children. Fortunately, asthma can be effectively treated and most patients can achieve good control of their attacks.
 
What are the symptoms of asthma? Asthma prevents as on and off episodes of wheezing sound in the chest, difficulty of breathing, chest tightness, and coughing, especially at night or in the early morning. Some of these symptoms can be so troublesome and disturbing because of severe cough and difficulty of breathing resulting to limitation of activities. In some children it may present as recurrent colds that take more than 10 days to clear up, or as a complication of pneumonia.
 
The symptoms of asthma are due to long standing inflammation and swelling in the airways making it over-responsive or irritable (figure 1). Treatment for this inflammation is needed to achieve control of asthma.
 
If you or your child has these symptoms, an evaluation by a doctor is needed. Your doctor might do some work-ups after she/he takes your history and does physical examination. These will measurement of lung functions to confirm the diagnosis of asthma. Chest X-ray may have to be taken to check for other problems like pneumonia or primary complex.
 
To check if a person’s symptom are due to asthma, this can be tested by spirometry. Spirotmery (or pulmonary function test) is the preferred method of measuring airflow limitation and its reversibility to establish a diagnosis of asthma.
 
Another important tool frequently used to check an asthmatic person if he is having an attack, is peak flow meter. (Figure 2). The peak flow meter will check a person’s ability to exhale forcefully since asthmatic people have difficulty in doing this. It both diagnosis and the monitoring of asthma attacks and severity.
 
For patients whose asthma attack is triggered by allergy, skin test can be done to identify allergy triggers or by measuring of specific IgE in the blood. Finding out the triggers is important for proper avoidance and advice in controlling asthma attacks.
 
If you or your child experience these symptoms, it is best to seek the help of your doctor. Proper examination and treatment will have you back your normal activities.