What is Asthma and How Is it Diagnosed and Treated? [Video]

Transcript

Asthma is inflammation in the small airways of the lungs.

And so the lungs, they have these little tubes that take air out into the peripheral of the lungs.

Asthma is inflammation of those small airways, and it’s chronic inflammation, which means that lasts for a while.

Asthma Symptoms

There’s times when asthma has no symptoms and people feel good, and then there’s times when people have symptoms.

And when those symptoms happen, they’re typically shortness of breath, meaning, “I can’t get a deep breath,” or, “I’m having trouble getting air out.”

Coughing, wheezing so that they actually hear themselves breathe.

All of those happening kind of at certain moments, which we call exacerbations.

Asthma Diagnosis

Asthma is diagnosed clinically, and so that means the person comes in and talks to a care provider, and that care provider makes a diagnosis based on typical symptoms.

So we test for asthma using a spirometry.

And what happens is a person comes into …