Asthma Treatment Goals

The good news is that you can avoid these problems. As with asthma during any time of life, proper treatment can help you, and your baby, stay healthy. With your asthma under control, you usually can expect:

- Fewer asthma symptoms, such as hard breathing, even at night

- No limits on moderate exercise or other activity appropriate during pregnancy

- Normal or near-normal tests of lung function

- Few or no asthma attacks

- No trips to the emergency room or hospital for asthma

- Easy use of medication with few side effects for you or your baby

- Delivery of a healthy baby

The key to achieving these goals is to create a personal asthma management plan for your pregnancy. Your obstetrician or nurse-midwife can help you understand how asthma can change during pregnancy. Your primary care provider can also help. Feel free to ask questions, gather information, and voice concerns. If you have severe asthma or allergic asthma, you also should see an asthma specialist during your pregnancy.

When you're pregnant, you need to consider carefully the three features of asthma management: triggers, medication, and monitoring.

Talking with your doctor

When you're at the doctor's office, do more than just listen. Ask questions. Be honest about any concerns you might have. Honesty with your doctor is essential. You're not the only person who thinks asthma is complicated or confusing. Researchers have spent years trying to unravel the mysteries of this condition, and they're still hard at work on these efforts. Knowledge about asthma changes rapidly, so it's not surprising that you may have questions.

Your doctor has treated other people who have asthma and won't be surprised to hear your questions. Maybe you've heard that asthma medications are dangerous. They aren't, and your doctor can tell you why. Perhaps someone told you that asthma is all in your head. It's not. Now's the time to ask questions and share any concerns you might have about your health.

Diagnosis Older Adults with Asthma

In older adults, asthma can be difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to common conditions, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This general term describes a number of lung conditions (particularly chronic bronchitis and emphysema) in which your lungs gradually become less efficient at inhaling and exhaling air. In other words, your lungs don't function as well as they once did. Heart disease also may cause asthma-like symptoms.

Elderly adults with asthma may cough often, feel a sensation of tightness in the chest, feel out of breath, and wake up at night frequently. To diagnose asthma, a health care provider will do a physical examination, take a medical history, and perform one or several specific lung function tests. If a doctor is still uncertain, older adults might be asked to try an asthma medication. If symptoms respond, then asthma is probably the cause.

As for everyone with asthma, an asthma treatment plan involves avoiding asthma triggers, taking the right medication, and monitoring breathing.