Experts in asthma management and treatment

If your child has asthma, you know how significantly the condition can affect quality of life — from sidelining physical activities to causing numerous missed school days.

At Children's, we're experts in asthma management and treatment. Our goal is to keep your child in the game by controlling asthma symptoms and preventing asthma attacks.

As you may already know, asthma is the leading serious chronic illness among children in the United States. In fact, each year more kids are hospitalized at Children's Medical Center for asthma than any other diagnosis – and we treat more kids in our hospital for asthma than all the other pediatric providers in North Texas combined.

Using the knowledge and experience gained from treating so many asthma patients, Children's developed two innovative programs to control and prevent asthma: the Asthma program and the Asthma Management Program.

The Asthma program

The Asthma program coordinates your child's clinical treatment across all areas of the hospital, from the emergency room to inpatient and outpatient care. A key component of the CAC is the Asthma Center Clinic, where patients with moderate or severe asthma may be seen by a team of clinical experts, including physicians, nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, certified asthma educators (AE-Cs) and other specialists who provide comprehensive care and education to patients and families.

Asthma Management Program

The Asthma Management Program helps asthma patients and their families manage the illness at home and between doctor visits. This six-month program teaches patients and families self-management skills to help decrease asthma symptoms so patients are better able to participate in normal activities. Patients do not visit the hospital. Instead, families are visited twice at home by a registered pediatric nurse, receive the basic tools to self-manage asthma, have their homes evaluated for specific asthma triggers, and receive bi-weekly telephone check-ups with a certified asthma educator.

The Asthma Management Program at Children's has been certified by The Joint Commission for Disease-Specific Care Programs — the only pediatric asthma management program in Texas that can make such a claim.

A recent analysis of patients and families who completed the Asthma Management Program at Children's demonstrated the program's effectiveness.

• Emergency room visits for asthma dropped 84 percent.
• Asthma-related hospitalizations were down 94 percent.
• Unscheduled doctor visits for asthma were down 75 percent.
• Missed school days due to asthma were reduced 74 percent.
• Missed work days by parents to care for their child due to asthma declined 88 percent.

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