Clinical aspects of asthma.

Asthma, one of the most common medical conditions during pregnancy, provides health care workers with an opportunity to diagnose, educate, and treat these patients. With proper fetal and maternal monitoring, outcome is good both for the mother and the baby. Elderly patients constitute a special group for whom asthma is underdiagnosed and undertreated. Exercise is a common trigger for asthma. The three factors determining exercise-induced asthma are minute ventilation, climatic conditions, and bronchial hyperreactivity. In vocal cord dysfunction, abnormal adduction of vocal cords causes airway obstruction. Vocal cord dysfunction can occur by itself or along with asthma and can be mistaken for asthma.