Asthma in Kids

By Dr. Art Hister

An intriguing study that was presented at the recent annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (held in Vancouver, hip, hip, hooray) compared attitudes to asthma in kids living in several countries around the globe, and the bottom line is that Canadians didn’t do very well.

Thus, for example “complete asthma control” (meaning that a kid has few symptoms and therefore has little need of medications for asthma flare-ups) was significantly lower in Canada (11.8 % complete control) than most of the countries looked at (15.3 % overall average complete control), which means one of two things: asthma is either much worse here (unlikely) or Canadian kids are not using the controlling medications (such as steroids) nearly as much or as efficiently as kids in other countries, which really reflects on the attitudes of either parents or physicians, and most likely both.

Also, apparently kids with asthma in Canada were more likely to be left out of sporting activities (13.2 %) than kids in other countries (8.4%), so either we have lots more kids with significant asthma symptoms up here (perhaps because so many of our kids focus on hockey, and playing in cold air stimulates more asthma symptoms) or perhaps again because we don’t do as good a job at controlling asthma symptoms as we could be doing.

The lesson here for parents is pretty simple: very few kids should be left out of sporting activities because of poorly-controlled asthma.

It not only limits their ability to get enough exercise, it also penalizes them socially and it’s a poor harbinger for the future.

If a child can’t breathe well enough to play a sport, that should be addressed and not simply left to be sorted out on its own.