Asthma is a condition that affects your child's lungs. The most common signs of problems with asthma include:
feeling short of breath
tightness in the chest
coughing
wheezing
These symptoms may be mild, moderate, or severe. Sometimes your child may feel well, and at other times your child may feel worse because of the asthma.
Asthma may affect your child's lungs for the rest of his life. But with good asthma control, your child can go on to live a perfectly normal life.
Asthma is the most common chronic (long-term) illness in children. About 10% to 13% of children have asthma.
Asthma symptoms are not always the same
Asthma symptoms are different in different children, even within the same family.
Your child may have different asthma symptoms triggered by different things.
Your child's symptoms may look or feel different from one episode to the next. They may change over time.
How asthma affects your child's lungs
If your child has asthma, your child's airways (breathing passages) are extra sensitive or "twitchy." When your child is surrounded by certain conditions or triggers, your child's airways become narrower. This makes it hard to breathe.
One or more of the following things can happen to make your child's airways narrow:
The lining of the airways gets thick and swells. This is called inflammation.
The muscles around the airways squeeze together and get tight. This is called bronchospasm or bronchoconstriction.
The airways make a lot of thick liquid called mucus.
All of these reactions make your child's airways narrower. This makes it harder for air to pass in and out of the lungs.