Asthma in Children- Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

 Introduction:

Asthma is a disorder caused by inflammation in the airways (called bronchi) that lead to the lungs. This inflammation causes airways to tighten and narrow, which blocks air from flowing freely into the lungs, making it hard to breathe. Symptoms include wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and cough, particularly at night or after exercise/activity. The inflammation may be completely or partially reversed with or without medicines.

Causes:

Idiopathic

Family history

Environmental

This diagram below demonstrates common causes of Asthma.

Symptoms:

Wheezing is when the air flowing into the lungs makes a high-pitched whistling sound. Asthma related to exercise (exercise-induced asthma) or asthma that occurs at night (nocturnal asthma), wheezing may be present only during or after exercise (exercise-induced asthma) or during the night, especially during early part of morning (nocturnal asthma).

Chest tightness: The child may feel like the chest is tight or won’t expand when breathing in, or there may be pain in the chest with or without other symptoms of asthma, especially in exercise-induced or nocturnal asthma.

Diagnosis of Asthma in Children:

Is challenging, unlike in adults its very difficult to perform lung function tests on children, so it is a clinical diagnosis, specially in children less than 5 years old. In this age group wheezing and breathlessness usually managed as viral induced wheeze versus asthma, but the treatment remain similar.

Treatment options are:

Salbutamol inhalers (Blue)

Steroid based inhaler, Clenil (brown)

Montelukast,a powder/tablet which is sprinkles over food, (yogurt, custard etc)

In an emergency, nebulizers are used effectively with salbutamol ,atrovent, with oral prednisolone.

Sometimes upper or lower respiratory infections precipitate or exacerbates asthma or induce non-asthmatic wheeze.

Summary:

If the child has breathing issues, there can be several other causes for that, consult your doctor.

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Posted by Dr Sadat Muzammil on May 30 2013. Filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.