Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Aug 8, 2015; 4(3): 38-40
Published online Aug 8, 2015. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v4.i3.38
Blunted perception of dyspnea in asthmatic children: A potential misleading criterion
Konstantinos Douros, Barbara Boutopoulou, Kostas N Priftis
Konstantinos Douros, Barbara Boutopoulou, Kostas N Priftis, 3rd Department of Pediatrics, “Attikon” Hospital, University of Athens School of Medicine, 12462 Athens, Greece
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this work.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Kostas N Priftis, Assistant Professor, 3rd Department of Pediatrics, “Attikon” Hospital, University of Athens School of Medicine, 1 Rimini Str, 12462 Athens, Greece. kpriftis@otenet.gr
Telephone: +30-210-5831299 Fax: +30-210-5832229
Received: March 23, 2015
Peer-review started: March 25, 2015
First decision: April 10, 2015
Revised: May 2, 2015
Accepted: June 15, 2015
Article in press: June 16, 2015
Published online: August 8, 2015
Processing time: 138 Days and 7.9 Hours
Abstract

Dyspnea (or breathlessness) is a symptom describing a perceived experience of breathing discomfort. Children’s awareness of dyspnea is variable and there is only a poor correlation between the objective respiratory distress measurements and the subjectively awareness of dyspnea. Those who do not perceive dyspnea may not be motivated to comply with their daily prophylactic treatment. Since dyspnea is the main symptom of asthma, and disease management is based largely on the description of symptoms between clinic visits, unreliable symptom report may mislead decision-making for long-term treatment of asthma. Thus, therapeutic decisions should not be taken solely on patients’ perception and description of dyspnea.

Keywords: Breathlessness; Respiratory distress; Tachypnea; Asthma; Symptom

Core tip: Children’s awareness of dyspnea is variable and there is only a poor correlation between the objective respiratory distress measurements and the subjectively awareness of dyspnea. Children with asthma vary in their perception of dyspnea for the same degree of bronchoconstriction. Therapeutic decisions should not be taken solely on patients’ perception and description of dyspnea.