Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about asthma.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow along at zero definals.com slash asthma or in the respiratory section of the Zero to Finals Medicine book.

Let's get straight into it.

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory condition of the airways that causes episodic exacerbations

of bronchoconstriction.

Bronchicion is basically where the smooth muscles of the airways, the bronchye, contract, causing a reduction

in the diameter of the airways. And narrowing of the airways causes an obstruction to airflow

going in and out of the lungs. In asthma, there's a reversible airway obstruction that typically responds to bronchidilators like salbutamol,

which is a beta 2 agonist.

This bronchoconstriction is caused by hypersensitivity of the airways and can be triggered by environmental factors.

We'll talk about some typical triggers,

and these triggers might affect some people's asthma

and not others, so triggers can vary from person to person.

And these are things like infection,

night times or early mornings,

exercise, animals, cold or damp air, dust, and strong emotions.

So what sort of things would a person present with that would suggest a diagnosis of asthma?

Episodic symptoms are quite key, so the symptoms come in episodes,

diurnal variability with symptoms being worse at particular times of days, such as night time or

early morning, dry cough with a wheeze and shortness of breath, a history of other atopic conditions, so things like

eczema, hay fever, and food allergies, family history of asthma or atopic conditions, and a

bilateral, widespread polyphonic wheeze, so a wheeze of varying sound qualities that's been heard by a

...