Misunderstandings about asthma prevention and treatment

1. Asthma cannot be cured, and it is useless to treat it: Asthma is a relatively stubborn respiratory inflammatory disease that is difficult to cure. Patients and their families often have negative emotions, lose confidence in recovery, and even have despair. In fact, although asthma is difficult to cure, correct and effective treatment can make the patient's symptoms disappear, avoid acute asthma attacks or the development of emphysema and cor pulmonale, and enable patients to live and work normally like healthy people.

2. Treatment only during an attack: Asthma is a chronic airway inflammation, which exists for a long time, whether in an attack or in remission. As a chronic disease, the treatment of asthma is a long-term process, which includes not only rapid relief of symptoms during an attack, but also maintenance treatment during the stable period. Stable treatment is the key content of long-term management of asthma patients, which can significantly reduce the number of acute asthma attacks, protect lung function, and help improve the quality of life of patients.
3. Blind use of antibiotics: There are many causes of asthma attacks, including allergies, fatigue, emotional excitement, viral infection or bacterial infection. Antibiotics are only needed when the patient has an asthma attack accompanied by fever, coughing up thick sputum, or increased white blood cell count, and there is clinical evidence of bacterial infection. Improper use of antibiotics not only fails to control asthma symptoms, but is also likely to cause bacterial resistance.

4. Refusing to accept hormone treatment: Some patients are worried about the side effects of hormones and refuse to accept glucocorticoid treatment. In fact, glucocorticoids are available in three dosage forms: intravenous, oral and inhaled. Most patients can control their symptoms with inhaled glucocorticoids. Inhaled treatment is a local medication with a small dose, directly acting on the target organ, taking effect quickly, and having few systemic adverse reactions. It is the first choice for the treatment of chronic persistent asthma.
5. Failure to avoid triggering factors in time: Although some patients can take medication in a standardized manner, their symptoms are still poorly controlled. Analysis shows that the patients are exposed to asthma-inducing environments for a long time, such as painters. Only focusing on drug treatment but ignoring the need to avoid allergens often makes drug treatment less effective.
6. Not paying attention to active treatment of concurrent diseases: Some asthma patients have concurrent diseases such as rhinitis and gastroesophageal reflux disease but do not actively seek treatment.