Asthma: Causes, Symptoms, and Management Techniques

What is asthma?

Asthma is a chronic disease. It is characterized by inflammation of the bronchial tubes that produces shortness of breath, coughing, and wheezing.

This inflammation of the bronchi makes them more sensitive and reactive to any stimulus and easily triggers asthma.

It goes through outbreaks, the child being asymptomatic for seasons. Depending on the number of asthma episodes and the disease-free periods, it is classified as severe, moderate or mild.

Cause

Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood and affects between 10-12% of children.

Asthma has a genetic cause and it is not surprising that some of the family members of the asthmatic child also suffer from this disease.

Asthmatic children are predisposed to their bronchial tubes reacting abnormally to certain triggers: stress, viruses, allergens or irritants. This response produces inflammation and narrowing of the bronchi that make it difficult for air to pass, triggering the asthma attack.

Symptoms

The main symptoms are:

• Cough.
• Wheezing (wheezing when breathing).
• Shortness of breath or fatigue
• Chest tightness.

Not always all the symptoms appear at the same time, it depends on the severity or intensity of the crisis.

It must be taken into account that not all allergic children can have asthma but that there is allergic asthma in the genetically predisposed child.

The main triggers of asthma are particles that the child breathes that are capable of inflaming the bronchial tubes.

Allergens: the most common are dust mites. Pollens, cat hair or dander, and fungi can also cause problems.

Viruses that affect the respiratory tract.

The effort: exercise, laughter or emotional stress.

Some medications such as aspirin.

Irritants: tobacco smoke or perfumes.

It can manifest itself at any age from infants to adolescents.

Diagnosis

For the diagnosis of asthma, the most important thing is the patient's symptoms. There are medical examinations such as spirometry that allow us to see the functionality of the lung and can help in the diagnosis and control of the disease.

Treatment

Asthma treatment is based on controlling symptoms, it is not curative. It is helpful in keeping the child symptom-free and helping him lead a normal life.

The first thing to do is avoid triggers that cause asthma attacks: tobacco, allergens or irritants.

Drug treatment provides relief of symptoms (in asthma attacks) and a background treatment that deflates the bronchus and makes it less reactive, to reduce the frequency of attacks.

In the asthmatic crisis, inhaled bronchodilators are used: salbutamol and terbutaline. In the most severe cases, oral corticosteroids can be given.

The basic treatment is carried out with inhaled corticosteroids (they act locally at the lung level and have few side effects in the body) or montelukast. In some cases they can be used together and their function is to reduce inflammation of the bronchus. They are given as long treatments lasting a few months to control the disease.

If asthma does not let the family sleep at night, if the child cannot play soccer or dance ballet, if he constantly misses school (and the parents miss work), then the asthma is not controlled.

Every child with asthma should have a written asthma control plan. This plan tells the child and his parents what medicine to take when he is well; how to increase medication doses when symptoms worsen and when to call your doctor. The plan gives the patient and their parents control, and allows for timely treatment of symptoms, before the asthma attack gets out of control.