Asthma in Children

Asthma is a chronic disease affecting the respiratory tract. Your airway is a conduit that pumps air into and out of the lungs. When it suffers from asthma, the inner wall of the respiratory tract swells because it hurts

About 20 million people suffer from asthma in the United States. Nearly 9 million of them are children. Asthma is particularly serious, as the child's airway is smaller than adults. Children with asthma may cause wheezing, cough, chest tightness, dyspnea, especially in the morning and evening.

If symptoms of asthma are worse than usual, it is called an asthma attack. Asthma is treated with two drugs: rapid reliever to relieve symptoms of asthma and long-term management drug to prevent symptoms

Childhood asthma is different from adult asthma, but children face specific challenges. Children's asthma is the main reason for visiting the emergency department, hospitalization and missed student days. Unfortunately, pediatric asthma can not be cured and symptoms may persist through adulthood. However, with proper treatment, you and your child can control the symptoms and prevent damage to the lungs. If your child has asthma, he or she feels "My chest is strange" or "I always cough.If your child is sleeping, please listen to the cough. Being, laughing, shouting, or strong emotional reactions and stresses can also cause coughing or wheezing

Diagnosis of pediatric asthma is usually purely clinical diagnosis. A typical medical history is a child with a family history of asthma and allergy who experiences coughing and dyspnea and / or frequent bronchitis or long term respiratory infection while playing with friends. Asthma diagnosis is generally confirmed by improving asthma medicine test. If the children are big enough, they may be tested to aid in the diagnosis of asthma. Spirometry is a breath test that measures pulmonary function, and children can receive appropriate technical examination usually from about 5 years old. Another test is exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO), a marker of inflammation of the respiratory tract, and it can also begin around 5 years old. Pulse oscillometric methods are used to measure airway resistance for young children who can not perform appropriate pulmonary function testing techniques