With incessant development and modern lifestyle, more and more people are affected by Asthma, and children stands as being the biggest casualty to this illness. Asthma is a widespread and chronic disease. This particular disease is not bound by age group and can often surface at any point of human development but it has been observed that most started to get affected from as early as 5 year old.
There are some common signs among patients who contracted asthma at early age and doctors are often well placed to pick these out spot on. For children, the ubiquitous symptoms of Asthma are
tiredness and
exhaustion,
loss of appetite,
regular headaches and inclination to
cough while in the middle of some activities such as playing, laughing or even during night times.
Wheezing is also a common enough phenomena among kids, and they often complain about chest pain. In addition, heavy breathing tends to create that impression that the neck and chest muscles were being pulled. For more serious cases,
dark circles under the eyes are also usual characteristics of asthma sufferings. As a number of asthma symptoms are associated with children, it is only natural that symptoms displayed by one may vary greatly with another (it has been observed some experience coughing as the one single Asthma symptom). A common deduction from observations is that children 5 years old or below tend to develop these symptoms after a respiratory viral infection or due to cold, so it makes sense to take the child to clinic fopr regular check-up.
A number of factors are associated with asthma. For example, a common cause of asthma could be due to low birth weight. Then there is also the genetic consideration (children born to a family of asthma history are more prone to this disease) or sometimes frequent respiratory infections or allergies can play a major part in deciding if a child is to be affected by asthma. Secondhand-smoke and malnutrition during age are often regarded as asthma contributors as well. This is especially prevalent among black and male children.
The common belief held among health experts is that this disease is exacerbated by external environment such as pollution. When a child or the expecting mother are perpetually surrounded by polluted air with plentiful of dust and tobacco smoke, the respiratory diseases are most likely to manifest onto the new babies and this in turn results in asthma. It is also said that child born with an immune system that is deficient may also develop asthma, as the body is deemed to weak to manufacture sufficient antibodies to fight against this infection.
It is prudent that parents are able to succinctly describe the symptoms experienced by their kids. Symptoms like coughing, wheezing, etc have to be
related to the doctors so as to allow appropriate treatments, as they are administered according to symptom experienced. Additionally, the doctor would also want to work on a check list if this asthma is inherited or not. During the ensuing tests, doctor will examine the breathing pattern (both inhale and exhale routines) so that he can establish a clearer picture about the heart and lungs. Then a child would likely have to be made to undergo additional tests like chest X-ray and pulmonary function test to ascertain the actual degree of infection.
For meaningful asthma diagnosis, certain medical exams such as blood or allergy skin test, or X-rays to check on gastro esophageal reflux disease may be necessary. Since some of these are not allowed onto children age 5 and below, doctors often have to call on their intuition and experience to fill in the blanks after hearing the parents out on the symptoms and the history details, in addition to the physical examination performed.
