Flu jab for potentially asthmatic 2 year old

[purplearmadillo]

Sorry if this has been done elsewhere.

DS is 2.10 and is being treated for asthma and reflux. He also has sleep apnoea and we are waiting to find out about him having tonsils and adenoids out.

My question is, should he be having a flu jab? If so, is it for swine flu, normal flu or both. Have had no information from useless surgery so am going to chase it up, but am not sure what I am chasing. Thanks.

The flu vaccine contains the swine flu vaccine this year. Whether he needs it you would have to discuss with your doctor or decide yourself. You can have done it privately, but I only know Portland Hospital in London who do it privately for children, our GP does not give children the flu vaccine but for you it may be different. So I would first contact your GP and discuss it. Also, if you want it done, you might want to do it as soon as possible as long as he hasn't got colds or other illness at the moment as it takes a while to build up immunity and he may need two vaccines with a four week gap to get full immunity.

Thank you.

I called our surgery and the asthma nurse is calling me back about it tomorrow. We are also due to see his consultant tomorrow at great ormond street, who works privately out of the Portland, so I might ask him if he can make a recommendation about it too. We moved recently and I know our old surgery would have done it last year, but we didn't end up with a run of him being well enough to do it.

Do ask your consultant - I personally would probably go for it. My dd2 was just 2 when she had tonsils/adenoids out for severe sleep apnoea (she also had laryngomalacia - floppy larynx, which narrows the airway further) and she had flu jabs on advice of GP every winter due to her extra issues with breathing - though she wasn't, as far as we knew, asthmatic.

She still has the narrow larynx, in spite of being 90% better thanks to surgery, so had combined flu jab this winter.

ps she had reflux too - goes hand in hand with the laryngomalacia - again, that can impact on breathing. Hope all goes well, re surgery and avoiding winter nasties!

GP's will give the flu jab to under 5's if they are classed as being at high risk. They are classed as high risk if they have underlying health issues, including asthma. This years flu jab is a combination vaccine to protect against regular flu and also swine flu.

Clair100 - I think it depends on the GP, my GP does not believe that children under 5 can have asthma - period - So in his view there is no need to vaccinate them. I have severe asthma myself, in spite of seeing him on a regular basis for chest infections he never mentioned the flu jab and that they had started doing them. When I tried to make an appointment it was most difficult as they only do it during a 'flu clinic' which is once every two weeks!

Sorry for coming back to this late, I had got cought up with Xmas stuff.

Elibean, thanks for your comments. I have seen your historic posts about your DD actually when reading around sleep apnoea and tonsils coming out. It gave me quite a lot of comfort as my DS is a small 2.10 year old who has had lots of other problems and I was nervous about him having the op done so young. He is due to have it done on 18 January, having seen consultant yesterday. Interesting what you say about the reflux. DS has had a bronchoscopy done and a chest CT so I assume they would have picked up on a narrow larynx already, but I do get the impression there is something not quite right about his respiratory tract, with the breathing problems, reflux and now the ENT problems too. I really hope this operation marks the turning point for him because its been one thing after another for two years really.

Clair/DJ, my surgery has booked him in but I'm not sure that they have really understood he's under 3 despite me telling them. He's due to have it done on 30 December, so fingers crossed. I agree that different GPs seem to give wildly different advice and no one has actively mentioned it here, whereas my old surgery did.

He will need a second dose in 4 weeks if he's never had a flu jab before.

Hope it helps and keeps him well