Asthma
Asthma can mean different things to different people. To those involved in the public health system, asthma is a serious health concern affecting over 12 million people in the United States with 4 million under the age of 13, and costing the country 6.21 billion. To a health care provider asthma is a challenging problem with varied responses to various situations. To parent with child who suffers from the disease it is an ever-present negative which hazes a bright future.
A revolution in thought has occurred in the not so recent past which has lifted much of this haze surrounding this disease and its treatment. This new look at asthma can be summarized by looking at how the American Lung Association and the Merck manual describes the disease:
Asthma is now thought of as a chronic pulmonary disease characterized by reversible airway obstruction and inflammation from increased airway responsiveness to a variety of stimuli.
The main points of this summation are:
- Chronic pulmonary disease - It affects the lungs over a long period of time
- Reversible airway obstruction - the damage caused by asthma can be reversed, by medications
- Airway inflammation - A couple of main ways how asthma affects the lungs. The breathing tubes become smaller and they become swollen or inflamed.
- Airway responsiveness to a variety of stimuli - An asthma attack happens when the breathing tubes of someone with asthma reacts to something in their environment.
Previous definitions of the disease emphasized restrictions in the airways
of the asthmatic as the primary goal of treatment and ignored the chronic
nature asthma. This new way of looking at asthma is just out of its "childhood"
being about 13 years old when the first group of public health professionals
from around the United States published their study of this disease.
Learn More
- Asthma Risk Factors
- Asthma Triggers
- Causes of Asthma
- How Asthma Affects Children
- ASthma Guidelines
- Treatments for Asthma
- The Parts of the Lungs
- What happens during an asthma attack
- Why the lungs act the way they do during an asthma attack
Source -
http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual/section6/chapter68/68b.jsp
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=22583
Submissions, Critiques, Edits, and New Information Welcome
Last Updated 6/12/2006 1:21:47 AM
