Exercise-induced Asthma - Diagnosis

Diagnosis

The presence of exercise-induced asthma can be difficult to diagnose clinically given the lack of specific symptoms and frequent misinterpretation as manifestations of vigorous exercise. There are many mimics of EIB that present with similar symptoms, such as vocal cord dysfunction, cardiac arrhythmias, cardiomyopathies, and gastroesophageal reflux disease. In addition, it is important to distinguish those who have asthma with exercise worsening, and who consequently will have abnormal testing at rest, from true exercise-induced asthma, where there will be normal, baseline, results. Because of the wide differential diagnosis of exertional respiratory complaints, the diagnosis of exercise-induced asthma based on history and self-reported symptoms alone has been shown to be inaccurate. If health care providers rely on history alone to make a diagnosis of exercise-induced asthma, evidence shows they will be incorrect > 50% of the time.