Asthma season

Inhalers, nebulizers and peak flow monitors -- Tina Wright is familiar with all of them.

The Cape Girardeau mother has spent 20 years helping her four children battle the chronic respiratory disease asthma.

A new report released by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services shows that about 14,000 Missouri children under the age of 18 made trips to the emergency room for asthma in 2003, the most recent year data available. Hospital charges for young asthma patients totaled more than $10 million that year.

"It's one of Missouri's more common and costly diseases, especially for children," said Peggy Gaddy, manager of the health department's Asthma Prevention and Control Program.

Asthma is triggered by allergens, infections, exercise, abrupt changes in the weather and exposure to airway irritants such as tobacco smoke.

Wright's 8-year-old son, Tevyn, battles the disease each year when the weather turns cold.

"Between late spring and during the summer, he's fine. Once it hits early fall, it gets bad. He's in and out of the doctor's office," Wright said.

Tevyn Wright's doctor has said he isn't allergic anything specific. However, pollen levels play a role in triggering asthmatic reactions, his mother said.

As soon as the seasons change, Tevyn begins using an inhaler and nebulizer, a machine that converts liquid medication into a fine mist. "He's doing about four treatments on his nebulizer each day," Wright said.

Weather and allergies are the most common triggers of asthma during this time of year, said Mary Ann Hoffman, Franklin Elementary School nurse.

"Fall and spring is the most opportune time to trigger asthma attacks," Hoffman said. "Southeast Missouri is famous for its ups and downs in the weather, and that's typically when you see a lot students suffering with asthma."

More than 300 of the about 4,000 students in the Cape Girardeau School District have asthma, according to datacompiled by the school district's nurses.

School nurses serve an important role in helping children control their condition by administering the students' medication at school to reduce asthma symptoms, Gaddy said.

"We stay on top of it," Hoffman said. "As soon as I start to hear a student wheezing, then I know that means they could need additional medication."

Hoffman said the school nurses take steps to prevent a child from having an asthma attack.

The school's nurses also use peak flow monitors, which are hand-held devices that measure how efficiently air is moving through the lungs. The monitor can warn of an oncoming attack so patients can adjust their medication.

"Tevyn hasn't missed much school," Wright said. "Once it gets to fall, we're regular with the breathing treatments -- he takes two treatments at school -- so he can control his asthma."

As children get older, they are less likely to be treated in emergency rooms for asthma, Gaddy said. Missouri's highest asthma rates are found in children ages 1 to 4.

Each of Wright's children suffered from asthma. Her two oldest daughters, each in their 20s, have outgrown the disease. "I also had asthma when I was a kid, and started to outgrow it when I got older," she said.

jfreeze@semissourian.com

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