Andrea Pappalardo, MD, FAAAAI, FACAAI

Pappalardo reports consulting for FARE, Northwestern University and OptumRX; receiving grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the American Lung Association, FARE, National Institutes of Health and Respiratory Health Association; and receiving honoraria from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network and the Wisconsin Allergy Society.

April 01, 2025

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VIDEO: Controlled asthma increases quality of life for pediatric patients

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Well, it can impact greatly. So most people that are kids, they wanna run and jump and play and do whatever their friends are doing. So if you have asthma that's not controlled, you cannot do those things. But if you have asthma that is controlled, you can do all of those things. And so if you have controlled asthma, your quality life goes way up, right?

And they show that, like a lot of the treatments that we give you get a lot better, you're happier, you live your life doing the things you wanna do. You know, what's your measure of happiness? You're doing the things you wanna do. You wanna run, jump and play, you wanna be with your friends. Now, if you are not able to do those things, because your asthma is not controlled, you end up kind of holding back and then that affects your life. You don't wanna hold back. You wanna do the things you wanna do, and that's for everybody and for any disease state.

So if you can get that disease state under control and be honest with yourself, because I think a lot of times, even as children, children know when there's a problem, but oftentimes they're like, "I'm fine, everybody's fine." But they're not fine. And so we have to really kind of continue to monitor these things, be honest with ourself. I also have asthma, so I can say that. Sometimes I'm like, "I'm fine." And I'm not. And my daughter does the same thing, but with controlled asthma, she's now able to run track and do sprints and play soccer. And so she was not able to do those things to the full capacity in a year or so before, but with treatment, she's able to.

And that's the kind of thing we wanna get people at is that what are your goals of things you wanna do? You wanna do, run the pacer without, you know, passing out. That's a really good goal. Let's do that. Let's get that to be our goal. Let's have you work on that and work up to that. And so that your quality of life, of feeling you have met those things you wanna do is exactly the kind of quality that we want.

You can have a great quality of life with asthma. It just needs to be controlled. And we need to just make sure that it's not rearing its ugly head periodically.