diagnosis of asthma includes typical symptoms and variable airflow limitation
- related: Asthma reactive airway disease
- tags: #permanent
- source: 2022 GINA Report
Symptoms include wheezing, shortness of breath, tightness, cough. These symptoms have following characteristics:
- vary over time and intensity,
- triggered by exercise, allergens, cold air
- worse at night or after waking up
- worse with viral infections
Variable airflow limitations:
- FEV/FVC below LLN
-
20% increase in peak expiratory flow after salbutamol
- excess variability such as with bronchodilator response, increased FEV1 from baseline after 4 weeks of treatment
- greater the variation means more likely to have asthma diagnosis
- could become persistent in long standing asthma:
Baseline obstruction with normalization after bronchodilator could suggest asthma, whereas baseline obstruction with failure to achieve normalization would suggest more COPD.1