5-year-old Xiao Ming has been suffering from a cold and cough for 3-4 weeks. Medications are needed to suppress the cough, and once the medication is stopped, the cough becomes more violent. At night, I would cough unconsciously until I woke up, and I couldn't eat well when I was eating. I coughed until I vomited for a while.
At first, my parents were busy at work, and my grandmother thought it was just a small cold and didn't care much. I took Xiaoming to the hospital over the weekend to find out that Xiaoming was breathing a little sharply, and the stethoscope had obvious stridor, but there was no pneumonia or fever. It can be initially determined to be an asthma attack, and it is a special type of asthma-cough variant asthma, and medication for acute asthma symptoms is given. Then I went back to the clinic for asthma medication control, and the situation improved a lot for a few months.
The incidence of asthma in China is about 5-10%, of which about 15% of children and adolescents under the age of 20. About 1 in 5 patients with clinically observed cough is related to respiratory sensitivity and asthma.
What are the symptoms of asthma?
Asthma is a series of inflammatory reactions in the respiratory tract that are stimulated by allergens. Common symptoms include coughing, shortness of breath, wheezing and chest tightness. Respiratory stridor refers to coughing when exhaling vigorously. Listening to the airway with a stethoscope will produce a squeaking sound like the wind blowing. Parents can put their ears against the child's chest wall to listen to them and detect whether there is stridor.
Allergic children are a high risk group for asthma. Common allergic symptoms include atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, food allergies, etc. In addition, if parents have allergies, or if someone in the family smokes, it will also increase Children are prone to allergies.Why does
have asthma?
There are many triggers for asthma, such as dust mites, molds, cockroaches, air pollutants, changes in temperature and humidity, large temperature differences between morning and evening, pollen, and environmental irritants that can aggravate symptoms, such as new furniture with high formaldehyde levels, or Someone who smokes can make asthma attacks worse.
In addition, respiratory tract infections are also prone to cause asthma in children. Once a child with asthma has a cold, the cough will last longer than a healthy child. Therefore, when a child has repeated coughing and wheezing, be careful about asthma.
How to treat asthma?
Bronchodilators are used in the acute phase of asthma. When the acute phase is over, regular use of asthma maintenance medications, such as inhaled steroids and oral leukotriene receptor antagonists, can reduce the inflammatory response of the respiratory tract and prevent recurrence of acute attacks.
When visiting a doctor, the doctor will diagnose the child's asthma by asking about the frequency, severity, and triggering factors of the child's asthma symptoms, including observing how the child usually breathes and whether it is particularly laborious and rapid.
Next will use chest imaging to rule out other lung diseases such as pneumonia and pneumothorax. In addition, children over the age of 2 can start allergen testing, and 5 to 6 years old can have lung function testing to further check the cause and severity of asthma.
5 Ways to Prevent Asthma
Maintenance of daily life to prevent asthma is very important, 5 lifestyle habits to reduce the chance of asthma:
Appropriate exercise: children with asthma can go swimming, because swimming can improve cardiopulmonary function and can also Let the children practice adjusting to changes in humidity and temperature.
Balanced diet: eat more vegetables and fruits, such as foods rich in antioxidant vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, such as guava, kiwi, nuts, almonds, etc., and also eat more cereals and beans , fish, eat less red meat, dairy products, desserts.
Breastfeeding: In infancy, breastfeeding can prevent asthma. Pay attention to air quality: avoid exposure to triggers, such as pollen, when outdoors; try to maintain humidity at 50% indoors. Pay attention to the temperature difference between day and night: adjust clothes and wear masks in time to reduce the stimulation of cold air.
Asthma in childhood, if properly controlled, will mostly improve or even recover in adulthood. On the contrary, if you let the asthma attack repeatedly, the patient's lungs will continue to be inflamed, and the lung function will also deteriorate, and even develop into severe asthma, which should not be ignored.
In addition, I would like to remind you that when a child has cold symptoms, especially when the cough persists, they should seek medical attention for acupuncture diagnosis and early treatment. Sometimes a child's long-term cough and shortness of breath are actually a type of asthma!
