Managing asthma with the adolescent

Adolescents are at high risk for poor outcomes from asthma owing to lifestyle and developmental changes. Not only are its prevalence, morbidity, and mortality steadily increasing, but asthma is the most common chronic disease of adolescents and it can have a profound impact on every aspect of their lives. However, through a management approach based on education, environmental modification, self-monitoring, and medication, adolescents can take control of a disease that otherwise controls them. Step therapy based on the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute asthma severity classification scale indicates the use of inhaled anti-inflammatory agents as maintenance medications and bronchodilators as rescue medications, thus preventing exacerbations and intervening when they occur. Through clinician-patient comanagement, asthma can be controlled and adolescents' lives normalized.