Diagnosing asthma

[ChristineC320]

My son has been coughing on and off for 7 weeks, just recently I've started to hear some wheezing in the inhale before a cough. If you have a child with asthma How can I tell if it's asthma or just a part of a cold.

He does have a bit of a runny nose. This hasn't been a great winter for us he seems to be ill every week with something new.

I plan on taking him to the gp after school.

Our ds1 was diagnosed with asthma at age 6.5 after having pneumonia twice in 6 months and quite a number of episodes of wheezing when he had a cold or hayfever. He already had a history of bad hayfever. Our gp took a watch and wait approach initially as they couldn't do the spirometre test at his age and he didn't have an asthma attack as such, just wheeze plus the two episode of pneumonia. He had chest xrays with the pneumonia but it was the repeated episodes of wheezing combined with the pneumonia that finally made the doctor diagnose. We are in Aus so may be different pathway in UK. He got an asthma management plan for school and a preventer puffer (flixotide) for use over the winter months (as well as ventolin), and has the flu shot at the start of winter now. Preventer has made a huge difference.

My son had a viral wheeze, every time he got a cold he would get asthma symptoms ( diagnosed after being admitted to hospital). He then had a cough every night, worse with a cold. Mentioned this to a nurse and we got a brown inhaler for daily use to see if that helped. It did so asthma was highly likely but still not confirmed.