How to Identify Exercise-Induced Asthma

Male: If you are a coach or a supervisor of some kids playing athletic activity, what should you be looking for because sometimes kids do not want to tell you because they’re afraid they’ll be taken off their team or they won’t be able to—in some tip of level in any sport?

Michael Marcus: It’s very important for coaches and supervisors of children to be aware of the symptoms that can be observed in patients having exercise-induced asthma as opposed to just being tired during a workout. The patient will be breathing rapidly. They will take longer to recover that breathing than a patient who is just tired. Their nose may be flaring where you see a widening of the opening in the nose. They’ll be sucking air in their mouth and it’ll take a longer time to recover. You may see the chest moving in and out with a lot of effort with the space between the ribs being sucked in, what we call retractions.

These are very important symptoms to pick up on and it doesn’t mean the child is out of shape, it does mean they need to be evaluated. The safest approach is that if there’s any suspicion that exercise-induced asthma is present, have the child undergo a good evaluation in a study which I did 25 years ago. We went into an average high school and had children who did not have any history of asthma go through an exercise period and I did breathing test on them. We found that 10% of the children in the class, high school aged kids who had no previous history of asthma did show signs that exercise-induced asthma which had previously been unexpected. So, be suspicious, look at the recovery time of their athletes and then do the assessment in a qualified lab.


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