Asthma Complexities

Asthma Complexities

Medical Author: Dennis Lee, MD
Medical Editors: Jay Marks, MD, and William C. Shiel, MD, FACP, FACR

• Unusual symptoms of asthma
• Can a cough without wheezing be due to asthma?
• Nocturnal asthma
• Masqueraders of asthma
• Cardiac asthma
• Other bronchial conditions
• Vocal cord dysfunction (VCD)
• Other hypersensitivity reactions
• Exercise and sports
• Exercise induced asthma (E.I.A.)
• What causes exercise induced asthma?
• What sports are best suited for exercise induced asthma? What sports are not?
• Ways to prevent and treat exercise induced asthma
• Conditions that may worsen asthma
• Gastroesophageal reflex disease
• The allergic rhinitis-asthma connection
• Sinusitis and asthma
• Asthma Complexities At A Glance

What do all of these individuals have in common? An active 13 year-old becomes breathless shortly after her soccer games and coughs on a cold winter's night. A young woman has a dry, hacking cough that has persisted for a year after her last "cold." A teenager sleeps poorly and is awakened early every morning with chest tightness and difficulty breathing. What these individuals have in common is the possibility that they all may have asthma.

Unusual symptoms of asthma

Patients suffering from episodes of asthma do not always have the typical symptoms of asthma such as shortness of breath, chest tightness, and wheezing (symptoms of airway narrowing). Instead, patients can have symptoms that may not appear to be related to asthma. These “unusual” asthma symptoms include:

• rapid breathing
• sighing
• fatigue; inability to exercise properly
• difficulty sleeping
• anxiety; difficulty concentrating
• chronic cough without wheezing

To complicate matters, symptoms of asthma are not consistent and often vary from time to time in an individual. In some patients symptoms are influenced by diurnal factors, for example some patients experience asthma primarily at night (nocturnal asthma) rather than during the day. Furthermore, episodes of asthma can be triggered by many different factors such as allergens, dust, smoke, cold air, exercise, infections, medications, and acid reflux. Finally, other illness such as heart failure, bronchitis, and dysfunction of the vocal cords can cause symptoms that mimic those of asthma. For these reasons, accurately diagnosing and treating asthma can be a challenge.

For a comprehensive review of symptoms, causes, and treatments of asthma, and for a better understanding of the normal anatomy of the airways (trachea, bronchi, bronchioles and the lung), please visit the asthma article.

Source: MedicineNet.com
http://www.medicinenet.com/asthma_complexities/article.htm