BANGALORE: Asthma affects more than seven lakh adolescents in the city causing them to miss several hours of school every year. In fact, 16 per cent of school absenteeism is due to asthma, say doctors.

Pulmonologist B.V. Murali Mohan, consultant at Parijma Medical Centre, says that asthma can cause many problems and could also be fatal. There are several hundred deaths a year in India because of asthma. He says that once treated it can be brought under control. "The problem is that asthma is often not treated in India."

Asthma is a condition that affects the airways of a person. When a person with asthma comes into contact with something that irritates their airways (an asthma trigger), the muscles around the walls of the airways tighten so that they become narrower and the lining of the airways becomes inflamed and start to swell. Sometimes sticky mucus fills the remaining of the airways, making it difficult to breathe.

Wheezing

Because air can flow through the passage easily, the person breathes hard making a whistling or wheezing noise. Symptoms of asthma include rapid, noisy breathing, chest congestion, wheezing and coughing, frequent infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia and shortness of breath.

However, many a times, its symptoms can easily be confused with those of a common cold. Because of this, a lot of cases of asthma remain un-diagnosed in the country, say doctors. It is this aspect that worries them as they observe another World Asthma Day on May 2.

"Some parents do not realise that their child has asthma and just keep giving him/her cough medicines. But these won't help," says Dr. Mohan.

He says that if parents find their children getting up from their sleep often due to coughing or because of shortness of breath, they should take the child to a physician.

"It is best to get asthma treated at an early stage. It is easier to bring it under control," he adds.

Dr. Mohan says that in many cases asthma is not as well controlled as it could be because patients do not take the inhaler regularly. He says the fear that use of inhalers could lead to addiction of steroids is unfounded. "The dosage dispensed through an inhaler is very little and does not produce any side effects," he says. K.S. Satish, chest physician at Wockhardt Hospital and Heart Institute, says that by constant use of preventive inhalers, a person with asthma can reduce the incidences of attacks.

Uncomfortable disease

"Asthma is a very uncomfortable disease and so you want to bring down attacks to the minimum."

Dr. Menon says that it is a myth that persons with asthma cannot lead a regular life. He says that a lot of athletes are persons with asthma. In fact, 21 per cent of the athletes who took part in the Sydney Olympics were had asthma.

"If they can reach Olympic levels of fitness, they can definitely lead a regular life," he says.

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