• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Health

What are the best ways to diagnose and manage asthma?

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
July 18, 2017
in Health
Reading Time: 2 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

GALVESTON, Texas – What are the best ways to diagnose and manage asthma in adults? This can be tricky because asthma can stem from several causes and treatment often depends on what is triggering the asthma.

A team of experts from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston examined the current information available from many different sources on diagnosing and managing mild to moderate asthma in adults and summarized them. They determined that essential, effective treatment must involve a physical and breathing exam, a comprehensive health history of the patient and ask questions that may answer what triggers may cause an asthma attack. The findings are now available in JAMA.

Asthma affects nearly 8 percent of adults and leads to 1.8 million hospitalizations and 10.5 million visits to the health care provider's office each year in the U.S.

"When a patient comes in who may have asthma, it's important for providers to learn their health history, conduct a spirometry breathing test and a physical exam," said senior author Dr. William Calhoun, UTMB professor in the department of internal medicine, pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine division. "Once diagnosed, the provider should give the patient a questionnaire during each office visit to learn more about how well their asthma symptoms are controlled and how good they perceive their quality of life. Spirometry testing should be repeated every one to two years if the patient's symptoms haven't changed."

Chest imaging may be useful in diagnosing asthma in certain situations, including when the patient has a medically important smoking history or occupational chemical exposure, has long standing disease or mat be at risk for chronic obstructive lung disease or lung cancer.

"The goals of asthma treatment are to reduce the patient's symptoms, help ensure that they can maintain their normal activities, perform well on pulmonary function tests and minimize asthma associated risks such as future asthma attacks and medication side effects," said Jennifer McCracken, UTMB assistant professor in the department of internal medicine, division of allergy and immunology. "Because of the complex nature of asthma, providers need to approach patients with a guideline-based plan that takes environmental triggers such as allergens, viruses and occupational irritants into consideration as well the strengths and weaknesses of the medication that they are using in order to provide a well-tailored action plan."

The study authors noted that a key part of asthma management is a written asthma action plan that details the signs and symptoms of worsening asthma and the steps needed to combat it in layman's terms.

There are both short-acting and long-lasting asthma medications. For quick relief of symptoms, it's important for all asthma patients to have short acting inhalers readily available. These inhalers alone are appropriate for patients who only have periodic asthma. For patients with more constant asthma, longer-lasting daily maintenance controller medications are commonly prescribed in addition to short acting inhalers.

###

Other authors include UTMB's Sreenivas Veeranki and Bill Ameredes. The study was supported by The National Institutes of Health.

Media Contact

Donna Ramirez
[email protected]
409-772-8791
@utmb_news

http://www.utmb.edu

http://www.utmb.edu/newsroom/article11595.aspx

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Hydrocortisone’s Impact on Infants with Encephalopathy

September 23, 2025

Neurodevelopment in Preterm Infants: Catheter vs Surgery

September 23, 2025

Evaluating Cost-Effectiveness of Anti-CGRP Migraine Treatments

September 23, 2025

Improving Sleep to Prevent Delirium in Home Hospitals

September 23, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    69 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 17
  • Breakthrough in Computer Hardware Advances Solves Complex Optimization Challenges

    156 shares
    Share 62 Tweet 39
  • Tailored Gene-Editing Technology Emerges as a Promising Treatment for Fatal Pediatric Diseases

    50 shares
    Share 20 Tweet 13
  • Scientists Achieve Ambient-Temperature Light-Induced Heterolytic Hydrogen Dissociation

    49 shares
    Share 20 Tweet 12

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Unveiling Magnolia’s Role in Combating Metabolic Syndrome

Forecasting Cell Population Evolution Using a New Scaling Law

Beet Vinasse: A Urea Alternative for Dairy Cows

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.