In celebration of National Lung Month this August, experts in the field of pulmonary medicine have put focus on a growing problem in the country — asthma.

During the recent Agham Kapihan roundtable, experts weighed in with their thoughts about medical care for patients with asthma.

Among the panelists were Dr. Anna Marie Putulin, president of the Philippine Academy of Pediatric Pulmonologists; Dr. Maria Janeth Samson, president of the Philippine College of Chest Physicians; Dr. Guia Limpoco of the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians, and Dr. Cyril Joseph Tolosa, Medical Affairs Director of AstraZeneca.

Asthma is defined as a “heterogeneous disease with many variations (phenotypes), usually characterized by chronic airway inflation.”

According to Samson, common symptoms of asthma include coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and tightness of the chest. However, she said that the symptoms do not end there.

Data from The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, showed that 69 percent of hospital admissions related to asthma were due to uncontrolled or partially controlled cases.

This means that the majority of asthma cases in the country were not yet diagnosed or were just developing.

The doctors said that developing asthma cases were not the same. Some patients may exhibit symptoms that look like mild asthma but over time may develop into a severe type of asthma.

Patients’ reliance on short-acting beta-agonist (SABA) medicines or inhalers, especially with frequent usage, is said to indicate poor asthma control leading to worse outcomes.

Samson said that patients using more than three canisters of inhalers in a year have an increased risk of severe exacerbations, while patients using more than 12 canisters per year have an increased risk of asthma-related death.