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- Title
Diagnosing asthma in school-age children can prove challenging.
- Authors
Devani, Pooja; Gaillard, Erol
- Abstract
Asthma is the most common chronic respiratory condition affecting children in the UK. There is no single gold standard test to confirm the diagnosis and both overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis are common. Asthma should be suspected in any child presenting with episodes of wheeze, especially recurrent episodes of wheeze. Clinical diagnosis alone often results in misdiagnosis; all children from the age of five years under investigation for asthma in primary care should have access to spirometry, bronchodilator reversibility and FeNO testing. Abnormal spirometry with bronchodilator reversibility ≥12% confirms the diagnosis of asthma. Diagnosis should not be based on an abnormal FeNO value alone. A review based on symptoms alone without objective lung function monitoring may miss children at high risk of acute attacks as children with good symptom control often have abnormal lung function.
- Subjects
ASTHMA in children; ASTHMA diagnosis; SCHOOL-age child care; SCHOOL children; ALLERGY in children
- Publication
Practitioner, 2022, Vol 266, Issue 1863, p16
- ISSN
0032-6518
- Publication type
Article