How is asthma diagnosed?
Asthma can be hard to diagnose, especially in children younger than 5 years of age. Regular physical checkups that include checking your lung function and checking for allergies can help your doctor or other medical professional make the right diagnosis. During a checkup, the doctor or other medical professional will ask you questions about whether you cough a lot, especially at night, and whether your breathing problems are worse after physical activity or during a particular time of year. Doctors will also ask about other symptoms, such as chest tightness, wheezing, and colds that last more than 10 days. They will ask you whether your family members have or have had asthma, allergies, or other breathing problems, and they will ask you questions about your home. The doctor will also ask you about missing school or work and about any trouble you may have doing certain activities. A lung function test, called spirometry (spy-rom-e-tree), is another way to diagnose asthma. A spirometer (
Asthma is diagnosed based on a physical examination, personal history, and lung function tests. The physical examination looks for typical asthma symptoms such as wheezing or coughing, and the personal history provides additional clues such as allergies or a familial tendency towards asthma. Although lung function tests have not always been used for diagnosis in the past, the NHLBI Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma state that “Pulmonary function studies are essential for diagnosing asthma and for assessing the severity of asthma in order to make appropriate therapeutic recommendations. The use of objective measures of lung function is particularly important because subjective measures, such as patient symptom reports and physicians’ physical examination findings, often do not correlate with the variability and severity of airflow obstruction.” Lung function tests may be as simple as measuring peak flow with a peak flow meter, or using a simple spirometer, or may inv
Your primary care doctor will diagnose asthma based on your medical history, a physical exam, and results from tests. He or she also will figure out what your level of asthma severity is that is, whether it’s intermittent, mild, moderate, or severe. Your severity level will determine what treatment you will start on.
Contents | Previous | Next To diagnose asthma and tell it apart from other lung disorders, doctors look at many things, including medical history, physical examination and laboratory tests. These lab tests may include: Spirometry – A spirometer is a device used to assess lung function. This test can be done while the child is breathing normally or when the child is asked to forcefully blow out. This test can be performed on children as young as 2 years old. • Office spirometry is for children over 6 years of age. • Impulse oscillimetry can be done for younger, less cooperative children. Allergy testing – Allergies can be evaluated by either a scratch test or a blood test. Each test has certain advantages and the specialists in the Asthma Center will determine what test is best for your child. The tests are quick, relatively painless and can be performed in infants. Exhaled nitric oxide – A new test that is able to measure the amount inflammation present in the airways of young children
Your clinician can diagnose asthma by taking a medical history and doing a physical examination. There is no special ‘test’ or ‘x-ray’ that can diagnose asthma. Sometimes tests are done to help your clinician add to the history and examination findings. But, there is no test that must be done on every child. Common tests that are sometimes done on some children include: allergy tests, lung function tests; chest and/or sinus x-rays. There are other tests that look for diseases that are different from asthma. Many times, clinicians will give a child some asthma medicines to see if they get better. The child’s response to the medicines helps to make the diagnosis of asthma.
