Asthma: no longer a childhood condition
Asthma is seen as a childhood illness, but a new Australian survey has shown many older adults are being diagnosed with asthma for the first time. The survey conducted by the University of Wollongong’s Centre for Health Initiatives (CHI), reveals nearly one in five older adults has been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their life.
Asthma is seen as a childhood illness, but a new Australian survey has shown many older adults are being diagnosed with asthma for the first time.
The survey conducted by the University of Wollongong’s Centre for Health Initiatives (CHI), reveals nearly one in five older adults has been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their life.
In a collaborative project with the Asthma Foundation NSW, the CHI’s large-scale postal survey of 4,131 older adults living in New South Wales shows the majority of respondents believed it was unlikely that they would be diagnosed with asthma.
Over a third of the survey’s respondents indicates the condition can be “successfully controlled” without medication, showing a somewhat ignorance in people’s beliefs of the severity that asthma can bring to a person’s health.
Poor knowledge of asthma symptoms is a concern which surfaces throughout the survey as many older adults admit they did not recognise “shortness of breath”, “tightness in the chest” or “coughing at night” as typical signs of asthma.
HealthCanal.com website reported PhD candidate at CHI, Uwana Evers, as saying: “there is a lack for awareness of asthma symptoms, and breathlessness is not a normal part of ageing”.
Ms Evers says this lack of awareness often means older adults “do not raise concerns about their breathing with GPs”.
Pippa Burns, another PhD candidate with CHI, says while asthma cannot yet be cured, “it can, in most cases, be successfully managed through the use of appropriate reliever and preventer medications”.
Researchers recommend older adults with asthma visit their GP at least once a year for an ‘asthma review’, and that the community be aware of asthma in the elderly and sensitive to the signs and symptoms of the condition.
