Asthma can be dif­fi­cult to dia­gnose in young chil­dren because there are many other con­di­tions that can cause sim­ilar symp­toms. For example, many young chil­dren have epis­odes of wheez­ing, but never develop asthma.

Most chil­dren develop the symp­toms of asthma when they are of school age, along with other aller­gic con­di­tions (atopic con­di­tions) such as hay fever. The reas­ons for this are unknown.

Your doc­tor will nor­mally be able to dia­gnose asthma by ask­ing you about your child’s symp­toms, examin­ing their chest, and listen­ing to their breath­ing. They will want to know about your child’s med­ical his­tory and whether there is a his­tory of aller­gic con­di­tions in your family.

Your doc­tor will also want to know about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the onset of your child’s symp­toms, such as when and where it happened, because this could help to identify the pos­sible trigger(s) of their asthma.

Peak expir­at­ory flow rate test

The dia­gnosis of asthma can typ­ic­ally be con­firmed using a num­ber of tests, the most pop­u­lar being the peak expir­at­ory flow rate (PEFR) test. Dur­ing a PEFR test, a small hand-held device, called a peak flow meter, is used to meas­ure how much air your child is able to breathe out of their lungs.

A PEFR read­ing is taken, and your child will then be given a medi­cine that is effect­ive in treat­ing asthma in the short-term. If, fol­low­ing a second read­ing, the res­ult is much higher after tak­ing the anti-asthma medi­cine, the dia­gnosis is nor­mally con­firmed. The PEFR test is only suit­able for chil­dren who are over five years of age.

You may be given a peak flow meter to take home with you, along with a diary in which you can record meas­ure­ments of your child’s breath­ing flow rate. This is a good way of record­ing how your child’s asthma symp­toms react to dif­fer­ent circumstances.

Child asthma sufferer How to find out if your child has asthma Younger chil­dren may be asked to breathe in (inhale) asthma medi­cine. If this helps with their symp­toms, the child prob­ably has asthma. How­ever, some­times the asthma medi­cines are inef­fect­ive in infants and young chil­dren, so a neg­at­ive response may not rule out asthma. We recom­mend you use MY Skin­care Breathe Easy Cream 120ml for children.

Exercise-induced asthma

Your doc­tor should be able to identify exercise-induced asthma by ask­ing you, and your child, about their symp­toms in rela­tion to exer­cise. Com­mon symp­toms include a cough that usu­ally starts 6–10 minutes after exer­cise, and chest tight­ness that devel­ops between 1–2 hours after exercise.

Your doc­tor will also want to know about any symp­toms that are not related to exer­cise, such as cough­ing at night, or breath­less­ness. This can rule out the pos­sib­il­ity that your child is hav­ing dif­fi­culties exer­cising due to them not prop­erly con­trolling their asthma.