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 chronic asthma.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero to finals.com slash chronic asthma

or in the respiratory section of the zero to finals pediatrics book.

So let's get straight into it.

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease leading to variable airway obstruction.

The smooth muscles in the airway are hypersensitive and slightly inflamed,

and they respond to stimuli by constricting and causing obstruction to the airflow.

This bronco-constriction is reversible with bronchidilators, such as inhaled salbutamol.

Asthma is one of a number of atopic conditions which include asthma, exma, hay fever and

food allergies. Patients with one of these conditions are more likely to have the others. And these

conditions characteristically run in families. So always take a family history and don't be surprised

if their brother, their mother or everyone in the

family has asthma, exma and allergies. So what would make you consider a diagnosis of asthma

in a child? Some of the key features are a dry cough with a wheeze and shortness of breath,

episodic symptoms with intermittent exacerbations,

so periods where the child's much better

and other periods where they become wheezy and shorter breath.

Diurnal variability, which means it's worse at different times of the day,

and typically it's worse at night and early in the morning.

Typical triggers, which we'll talk about in more detail shortly. A history of other atopic conditions such as exma, hay fever and food allergies.

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