Know More About Bronchial Asthma

Hello friends, I am Nikhil Modi. I am a consultant specialist respiratory medicines, working in Apollo Hospital, Delhi. Today I will be sharing some words about Bronchial Asthma.

As we all know that due to the rising pollution, a rise in smoking habits, breathing problems are on a rise. One of the major breathing problem which is coming across all age groups, especially with children running into early bronchial asthma. It is a type of a chronic lung disease which is allergic in nature and can be caused due to exposure to dust, smoke, pollens and air pollution. Due to rise in this pollution, the number of cases of asthma is on rise.

How do we identify this condition?

Common symptoms we see in patients are;

• A cough, which may be variable during the day, it may be more in the early morning or at night or it can be hacking chronic in nature which may be dry or sometimes thick scutum associated with it.
• Breathing difficulty. Patients feel breathless even while sitting. And it increases while they do daily activities. The daily routine activities like washing, running, going to the office is hampered due to breathlessness.
• Also, there is some wheezing or whistling sound which is observed by the patients.

Sometimes these symptoms are more in the night time or in the early morning. And patients are too uncomfortable even while sleeping with it. So, if any of these symptoms are there, especially when you note these symptoms during the change of season. More in the winters or while exposure to dust, pollution, if these symptoms aggravate then you may be suffering from bronchitis asthma.

Treatment of this is simple. Now a lot of effective treatments are coming up which help in treating this. But one thing you need to know is that this disease is controllable and not easily curable. So, the treatment may be a long term. With time, as your symptoms are less, the medicines can be reduced to a minimum, but we do not allow these symptoms to crop up again and again by taking infrequent medicines as this can permanently damage your lungs. This damage may be irreversible and this damage may not be curable again. For these newer drugs like inhalers have come up with anti-allergic medicines. But these should be prescribed after full examination by a specialised physician, especially the chest physician so that the amount and doses of the drug can be individualised. As different patients need different types of drugs for the cure.

Once the treatment is started, there is regime to step up or step down the regime with which we can easily control the symptoms and patient can lead a very healthy life.

Further, sometimes, it is important to identify the allergens and exposure to them are prevented can reduce the symptoms.

With this, I thank you all and if you have any query, you are free to contact me through Lybrate platform.