Some people say that the diagnosis of bronchial asthma is simple and can be made from the name of the disease. In fact, the diagnosis of bronchial asthma is sometimes difficult, and many patients go through a long diagnostic process before a definitive diagnosis is made. The reason for this is that the symptoms of asthma are complex and diverse, and the “atypical” symptoms of asthma largely make the diagnosis of the disease more difficult. The following are some of the “atypical” symptoms of asthma. 1. Asthma with only coughing but not wheezing As you know from the subheading, sometimes coughing is also a symptom of bronchial asthma. In clinical practice, there is a disease called “cough variant asthma”, which is characterized by irritant coughing, i.e., coughing easily after airway stimulation, such as coughing or coughing aggravated by odor stimulation, when waking up in the morning, when there is a big temperature difference, after strenuous exercise, after crying or laughing. Some patients also have frequent coughs in certain seasons or seasons, which means that the cough has a more pronounced seasonality. Another characteristic of these friends is that they often have associated diseases such as allergic rhinitis. Many friends suffer from coughs and take antibiotics and other medications for a long time, which not only increases the financial burden, but also, seriously affects their health and has a negative impact on their life and work. If you or your friends around you suffer from cough and meet the above characteristics, you must go to the hospital and ask your doctor to see if it is cough variant asthma. 2.No cough, no wheeze, may also be asthma In many people’s impression, the symptoms of asthma is episodic wheezing, read the above text, friends know that there is another kind of asthma that only cough but not wheeze. In fact, there is another kind of asthma that does not cough or wheeze, and the only clinical symptom is chest tightness. Professor Shen Huahao of the Second Hospital of Zhejiang University Medical College received a difficult case more than 10 years ago, who had continuous chest tightness for 3 years and asked his family to keep rubbing his chest 24 hours a day, and was diagnosed as “mental disorder” by many hospitals. CCTV “Into Science” featured the story of this patient’s diagnosis and treatment. After 10 years of systematic research, the group led by Prof. Shen found that there is indeed a category of asthma patients who do not have typical wheezing symptoms but have chest tightness as the only clinical manifestation, and the concept of chest tightness variant asthma was discovered and proposed for the first time in the world. A comprehensive analysis of clinical data revealed that this type of asthma exhibits some features similar to typical asthma, such as airway hyperresponsiveness and reversible airflow limitation. Because this type of asthma has chest tightness as the only symptom, and this leads to a very high rate of underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of the disease. Clinicians recommend that patients with chest tightness, especially those with recurrent attacks, nocturnal episodes, spontaneous remission and a history of allergy or family history of allergy, should consider chest tightness variant asthma and be screened, and if lung ventilation is normal, airway provocation tests should be added. Typical asthma is easy to diagnose, but the “atypical” symptoms of asthma make the diagnosis of asthma difficult and, accordingly, affect the effectiveness of clinical management of asthma. In addition to the above mentioned cough variant asthma and chest tightness variant asthma, there are some other characteristics of asthma that need to be noticed by doctors and patients. For example, menstrual asthma in which the patient’s symptoms are related to his or her menstrual cycle and worsen during the premenstrual period or menstrual period; exercise asthma in which exercise is the trigger alone for an asthma attack. Some diseases are closely related to bronchial asthma, for example, allergic rhinitis. 10 years ago, the theme of the 7th World Asthma Day was: Pay attention to asthma and recognize allergic rhinitis. Through this year’s campaign, physicians and the public have gained a better understanding of the concept of “bronchial asthma and allergic rhinitis: one airway, one disease”. It is believed that the public’s awareness of bronchial asthma and the importance of the “atypical” symptoms of asthma will be significantly increased through participation in the World Asthma Day campaign.