When you have asthma symptoms such as coughing, recurrent wheezing, chest tightness, and troubled breathing, you should visit an asthma doctor to tell you whether you are suffering from the condition and what you should do to manage it.
How can doctors tell you have asthma? Well, they usually do a battery of tests to tell how well your lungs are working. Some of these tests include:
Spirometry
This is the main asthma test for people over 5 years. To tell whether you have asthma, the doctors will give you a tube connected to a spirometer. You should forcibly breathe in and out of the tube, and the spirometer will record the volume of air you exhale and how fast you do it.
Depending on your age, the doctor will determine whether you have asthma based on the volume of air you exhale. For example, if you have asthma, you will exhale at lower levels than normal as asthma has narrowed your airways.
If the doctor feels your airways have been compromised, he will tell you to take an asthma drug to open the passages then repeat the test. If your exhaled air is better the second time, you will be said to be suffering from asthma.
Challenge test
If the doctor undertakes the spirometer tests and the results are normal or near-normal, your doctor can try to trigger the asthma symptoms by asking you to inhale a product that causes the airways to narrow like the people suffering from asthma. One of the most common products that the doctor will ask you to inhale is methacholine.
The doctor can also ask you to jump on a stationary bike or jump around to determine whether your asthma is exercise-induced.
After taking the airways narrowing product or exercising, the doctor will ask you to undertake a spirometry test, and if your spirometry measurements are normal, chances are you don’t have asthma.
On the other hand, if the measurements fall significantly, you most likely have asthma.
Exhaled nitric oxide test
Here you breathe into a tube connected to a machine that measures the amount of nitric oxide gas in your breath. It’s normal for the body to release nitric oxide, but when you breathe extremely high levels, it means that your airways might be inflamed, which is a sign of asthma.
Asthma testing in children
Like adults, children can have asthma, and the doctor can help to know whether they are truly suffering from the condition.
In most cases, doctors don’t do lung tests in children under 5 years of age. Instead, they rely on the child’s signs and symptoms, physical examination and medical history.
If the doctor inspects the child and suspects they might have asthma, they prescribe a bronchodilator to open up the airways. If the child’s signs and symptoms improve after using the bronchodilator, they might be having asthma.
Allergy tests
Although allergy tests won’t help diagnose asthma, they help the doctor tell whether you have any form of allergies that might worsen your existing asthma.
Sometimes when you have allergies, you might be confusing it for asthma, so by the doctor testing the allergies and ruling them out, he can concentrate on testing whether you have allergies.
If you have both allergies and asthma, the allergy doctor Manassas VA will give you medicals to control the allergies to have an easier time managing asthma.
Other tests that the doctor can use
Besides the above tests, the doctor can use plenty of other tests to determine whether you have asthma. These tests include:
- Sinus CT scans
- Blood tests
- X-ray or computerized tomography
- Gastroesophageal reflux assessment
- Phlegm examination in the lungs