How is asthma diagnosed?
Sometimes asthma may difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to many other respiratory illnesses and infections. As a result, many people are not aware that they have asthma. Often, the only symptoms of asthma might be a cough at night or wheezing during exercise. These signs are often not alarming and are often passed off as bronchitis. To diagnose asthma, doctors will probably look at your medical history and give you a thorough physical examination followed by laboratory tests. One lab test your doctor might use includes spirometry (spy-ROM-uh-tree), where an instrument is used to measure the amount of air taken in and released from the lungs. A similar lab procedure to measure lung capacity is peak flow monitoring. Chest X-rays as well as blood and allergy tests may be required for diagnosis. ©2006 Crossroads Mobile. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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.
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.
