The hidden danger of adult asthma
We think of asthma as a children's disease. But, as Trish Lesslie explains, it affects - and kills - adults, too
Celeste Abrahams was sure she was dying. Gasping for breath and feeling agonising pains in her chest, she was convinced she was in the throes of a heart attack - even though she was just 32.
"I was terrified," she says. "I'd had difficulty breathing on my way to work that morning, but suddenly I felt like I was drowning."
She managed to call her GP, but blacked out as she struggled to describe her symptoms.
"The next thing I remember was coming to in the ambulance with paramedics pummelling my chest," she says.
At Epsom Hospital, Abrahams was told she'd suffered an asthma attack so severe that her heart had stopped beating. Two of her colleagues had given her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, almost certainly saving her life.
"I couldn't believe it," she says. "I'd never had asthma before and I'd always thought it was something you were born with. Until that moment, I'd had no idea you could develop asthma in your thirties."
It's a common mistake. Although asthma is seen as a childhood illness, of the 5.2 million known sufferers in Britain - a staggering one in 12 of the population - 40 per cent were diagnosed as adults. A quarter of them were aged 35 or more at the time.
Last year, asthma - an inflammation of the airways that affects breathing - claimed around 1,400 lives in Britain. The vast majority were adults, with less than 30 younger than 14. What makes this even more worrying, according to leading asthma charity Asthma UK, is that an estimated 90 per cent of those deaths were preventable.
"Lack of awareness of the symptoms - wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath and chest pains - almost certainly played a role in at least some of those deaths," says Karen Newell, an asthma nurse specialist with Asthma UK. "A lot of people don't realise they can develop asthma as adults, so they might not get medical help when they begin to experience symptoms. But the consequences of not doing so can be fatal."
next page 1/2...
next page 1/2...
By Trish Lesslie
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
