Male: All these medicines, is it better on maintenance combination you would recommend that you are comfortable with?
Female: Again, that is also very individualized treatment. We always try to tailor our treatments towards the child symptoms. Many children may not require inhaled steroids, where as others may require a daily inhaled steroids. Children that are using and needing the rescue medicines frequently maybe are better prescribed.
Male: What do you mean by rescue?
Female: So, a rescue medication is what you use when you actually see your child having symptoms of coughing, shortness of breath, wheezing.
Male: An example of that would be?
Female: Albuterol.
Male: Or?
Female: Xopenex. So those are our two typical most commonly used rescue medications and what those do is they work within seconds to minutes and they act to actually relax the muscle and the airways and open up an airway that maybe spasming during an asthmatic attack. When people say attack, people think, you know, it doesn’t have to be an attack where the child is crunching their chest or ready to pass out, can’t get air in. Attack can be as mild as a persistent cough or shortness of breath or maybe some difficulty or exercise intolerance may also server as milder symptoms of what people refer to as an asthma attack or situations in which you would use your rescue medications.
Male: Okay, and you mentioned steroids, how are steroids used?
Female: That also again depends on the child. There maybe a young child that requires a high dose or an older child that requires a low dose. It is very important…
Male: It is good meeting - the Pulmonary Doctor, the Pediatrician and good cooperation of everybody.
Female: Exactly, you really do need to check in with your physician. How often? You are using your rescue medications and how often you are having symptoms of exercise intolerance or night time coughing, wheezing, all of these are factored in. All of them are considered. Everything is considered in making a decision of whether we need to increase your preventative daily medications or decrease them.
Male: And the goal is that kids should be so well controlled, should not see an emergency room or hospitalization. That is our goal today.
Female: Absolutely.
Male: And also, we can have this normal lifestyle as possible.
Female: Absolutely. There should be no restrictions on activity.
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