Asthma diagnosis becoming trivialised, study warns

A new study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood has suggested that too many children are being incorrectly diagnosed with asthma, leading to the illness becoming trivialised in healthcare.

The report, entitled Is asthma overdiagnosed? warned that there should be more objective and careful diagnoses, with Asthma UK agreeing that better and more accurate testing is required. Official figures show there are around 5.4 million people currently receiving treatment for asthma in the UK, 1.1 million of whom are children.

In particular the report outlined that while steroid inhalers are life-saving when used properly, their side-effects should not be ignored.

As there is no definitive test to determine whether someone has asthma, doctors rely on guidelines to work out if someone has the condition. However, the research suggests that doctors need to think more carefully about each diagnosis they make and consider more objective and even invasive checks to confirm the illness.

The study recommends that in instances where the child’s condition is not improving despite the use of asthma medication, doctors should consider other diagnoses’ rather than merely increasing the dose of medication.

It also highlights that many children outgrow their symptoms and that diagnoses should be checked over time to ensure they are still relevant.

Professor Mark Baker of the New National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said: "Accurate diagnosis of asthma has been a significant problem which means that people may be wrongly diagnosed or cases might be missed in others."

Meanwhile, Asthma UK has called for more funding to increase research and development to procure a definitive test for the condition.

Dr Samantha Walker of Asthma UK said: "It is astonishing in the 21st century that there isn't a test your child can take to tell if they definitely have asthma. Asthma isn't one condition but many, with different causes and triggered by different things at different ages. Asthma symptoms also change throughout someone's life or even week-by-week and day-by-day.

She added: ”This complexity means that it is both over and under-diagnosed, in children and in adults, so people don't get the care they need to manage their asthma effectively. As a result, a child is admitted to hospital every 20 minutes because of an asthma attack and asthma attacks still kill the equivalent of a classroom of children every year in the UK."