A Patient with Asthma Seeks Medical Advice in 1828, 1928, and 2012 | Hacker News Reader

A Patient with Asthma Seeks Medical Advice in 1828, 1928, and 2012

nejm.org

79 pointstokenadult10 comments

I've had asthma my whole life. Just a few years ago I realized that my nighttime asthma problems were caused by acid reflex and I stopped taking my asthma medicine and replaced it with acid reducers. My asthma medicine wasn't helping. The most important thing now is that I sleep on my left side.

This is something I figured out myself based on Googling. None of my doctors ever suggested it.

I am not sure if this was my entire problem my whole life or if its just gotten worse recently and that's why I notice it more.

You need to change doctors. Any doctor worth their salt would have made this diagnosis. Seriously.

You should see a gastroenterologist for proper treatment of your reflux.

I am not at all a doctor, just a personal anecdote about acid reflux while sleeping. Start jogging. I know this could be very hard with asthma, but it completely cured my night time acid reflux.

Interesting timing, my friend's son was recently hospitalized (in the ICU) with a severe asthma attack. Very scary, and a week later he's still in the hospital -- but improving and out of the ICU.

His treatment? O2 and a nebulizer of some sort.

I can't help but think that with how common asthma is, that we'd be further along in treating it than a 5 or 6 day stay in a hospital for a bad flare up.

Interesting. In many ways we are still in the dark ages of medicine (treating symptoms). In the future we will know the causes of asthma, and directly fix them.

I would argue that the dark ages of medicine were the dark ages. Yes, we might still be tilting at windmills in our battle with symptoms, but this is no dark ages, rife with misinformation, superstition and a complete lack of records.

Indeed. Our ignorance will invariably overshadow our knowledge, the universe is too vast and too complex for it to be otherwise. But we shouldn't let perfection be the enemy of good.

Even better would be a cost analysis of what each of those visits ran the patient.

That would certainly be different, but by no means better.

A Patient with Asthma Seeks Medical Advice in 1828, 1928, and 2012

Seems like his asthma didn't prevent him for living for almost two centuries!

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