Could cough, chest spasms, wheezing and allergic colds be due to asthma?
Patient: Hi Doctor, My Son is 4 Years 4 months old. At age 4 years 1 month one day he suddenly got fever, severe cough, spams in chest when his chest was going inside and wheezing. he was diagnosed with LRTI and was treated in hospital for 5 days with nebulizers and antibiotics.HIs IGE serum and count was higher than normal. After 5days doctor discharged him from hospital and prescribed to give him budecort 100 2X2 puffs and motair lc kid 5 ml everyday for 3 months. He was very fine for 1 month and we stopped medications as we were unsure about steroids. again after 2 months he had severe dry cough and spasms.no fever now. We took him to hospital emergency where doctor nebulized him once and told he can be treated at home with levolin puffs every 6 hours for 4 days, budecort and montair to be continued for another 3 months... We wnated to know if this is asthma and he said he can t say now. This are allergic colds and he shuld be on montair lc and budecort and this may go away after child is 5 years. We are not sure if these steroids are safe....and if we can give him this for 3 months...is this asthma or can this be a different underlying disease? are the medicines safe and ok ? should i reduce his milk or egg intake? Doctor: Thanks for your query on HCMFrom history it seems your child has "multi trigger wheeze". it may be asthma but asthma usually diagnosed if this episodic wheeze persist even after six year of age.There is more chances of persistent of this wheeze even after 6 year if child has food allergy, allergic rhinitis, atopic dermatitis, or parents or other siblings have asthma.Treatment of multi trigger wheeze is similar to asthma and include salbutamole/levosalbutamole to control symptoms and inhaled inhaled steroid to prevent episodes.Inhaled steroid is safe and usually have only local side effect  like oral thrush which can be prevented if child do gargle after each puff. these medicine is necessary other wise child may have recurrent episode Your doctor is treating in right direction, so i suggest you to follow his all direction and dont leave medicine without his advice. regular followup with doctor is necessary because this condition require modification of dose according to response.For more queries you may contact me at this site.Regards-Dr Deepak Vaishnav