Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects your airways and interferes with your ability to breathe. Uncontrolled asthma can lead to the airways becoming swollen and increasingly narrow or producing excessive mucus, making it difficult for air to move in and out.

Common symptoms of asthma include coughing, wheezing, tightness around the chest, and breathlessness that alters in severity with time and with exposure to specific irritants/allergens. While asthma attacks can be serious, most symptoms can be managed by consulting a doctor who might guide a patient to quick-relief medications such as bronchodilators that open narrowed or swollen airways. In some cases, the doctor may also add anti-allergic medicines.

For long-term management of the condition, controller or preventive medications containing inhaled corticosteroids are given by the clinician to manage asthma on a day-to-day basis.

What is severe asthma?

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