April 11, 2020 | Black & Kletz Allergy
Asthma is a fairly common disease in the U.S. Asthma is a chronic disease that causes inflammation of the bronchial tubes (i.e., breathing tubes) resulting is symptoms that may include chest tightness, wheezing, shortness of breath, and/or coughing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 25 million people in the U.S. have asthma which equates to 1 in every 13 individuals or 7.7% of the population. Note that 7.5% of children in the U.S. have asthma. Asthma is more common in adult women (9.1%) compared with adult men (6.2%), however, in children, boys are affected more than girls (8.3% vs. 6.7% respectively). Regarding race and ethnicity, asthma prevalence in the U.S. decreases in the following order: Native American (10.5%) > African American (9.6%) > White (8.2%) > Hispanic (6.0%) > Asian (4.7%). The fatality rate per million in individuals with asthma in the U.S. decreases in the following order: African American (21.8%) > Native American (11.3%) > White (9.5%) > Asian or Pacific Islander (8.5%) > Hispanic (6.3%). From the above statistics, one can see that the fatality rate is not based on the prevalence. It should also be noted that the asthma prevalence has been increasing over the last few decades even though there are more treatment modalities available now than ever before.
Asthma is characterized by the class it is designated. Asthma is categorized as follows: mild intermittent, mild persistent, moderate persistent, and severe persistent. The classification depends on how often one experiences symptoms, how often symptoms are causing nighttime awakenings, if the symptoms are disrupting normal activities, and how often one uses their rescue inhalers. In addition to these categories, asthma can also be classified as exercise-induced asthma, cough-variant asthma, nocturnal asthma, occupational asthma, asthma with associated COPD (i.e., chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), cardiac asthma (i.e., not actually asthma but congestive heart failure and other heart disease that masquerades as asthma since the symptoms are very similar to asthma), allergic asthma (i.e., an older classification which is not used anymore), nonallergic asthma (i.e., an older classification which is not used anymore).
In addition to asthma, there are several conditions that mimic asthma in its presentation and some of them are as follows: cardiac asthma (mentioned above), vocal cord dysfunction and/or paralysis, GERD (i.e., gastroesophageal reflux disease), sinusitis, upper respiratory tract infections (i.e., URI’s), COPD (e.g., chronic bronchitis, emphysema), bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, thyroid gland tumors, lung or chest tumors, pulmonary embolism, anxiety, pneumonia, and food aspiration.
The diagnosis of asthma requires a comprehensive history and physical examination in conjunction with a pulmonary function test. Additional measures may be needed depending on the history and physical examination and may include allergy skin or blood tests, chest X-ray, other types of bloodwork, sweat chloride test, CT scans, and others. The treatment of asthma is catered to each specific patient based on the frequency and severity of their symptoms. A host of medications may be utilized and range from just a rescue inhaler (i.e., short acting beta 2 inhalers) for intermittent asthma to biologicals (i.e., Xolair, Fasenra, Nucala) for more moderate-to-severe cases. Other therapeutics utilized to treat asthma may include inhaled corticosteroids, long acting beta 2 inhalers, combination inhalers of corticosteroids and long acting beta 2 inhalers, leukotriene antagonists (e.g., Singulair, Accolate, Zyflo), methylxanthines (e.g., theophylline), and oral corticosteroids. The prevention of asthma symptoms can usually be achieved through allergy immunotherapy (i.e., allergy shots, allergy injections, allergy hyposensitization, allergy desensitization) as well as to attempt to avoid triggers that can exacerbate one’s asthma.
The board certified allergists at Black & Kletz Allergy have had more than 50 years of experience in diagnosing and treating asthma in the Washington, DC, Northern Virginia, and Maryland metropolitan area. We treat both children and adults and have office locations in Washington, DC, McLean, VA (Tysons Corner, VA), and Manassas, VA. We offer on-site parking at all of our office locations. The Washington, DC and McLean, VA offices are also Metro accessible. We offer a free shuttle that runs between our McLean, VA office and the Spring Hill metro station on the silver line. To schedule an appointment, please call one of our offices or alternatively you may click Request an Appointment and we will respond within 24 hours by the next business day. The allergy doctors at Black & Kletz Allergy are happy to help you diagnose and treat your asthma as well as any other allergy-related or immunological condition that you might have.
