Hey guys, I have been having breathing problems despite being treated for vocal cord dysfunction. Anyways, I've been reading up on a condition called reactive airway disease. It's a little bit different from standard asthma because it affects the upper airway. In patient who have this condition, it is noticeably harder to take breaths in rather than out. Similar to VCD, but last much longer. If you have problems breathing in and the situation doesn't resolve itself over a shorter period of time, than in maybe reactive airway disease. It's commonly caused by allergies, but according to jamie koufman it affects people with reflux also.
If anyone has been successively treated for this let me know. I've been struggling with this and it seems like this is the condition I have. This condition however, seems to be over all my doctors heads. Since I don't have asthma and my vocal cords aren't closed. They think I'm fine.
I have two links for you
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196486/
This study done on the effectiveness of Vitamin d3 for reactive airway disease. D3 seems to help and I can agree with that. D3 did help me some.
Next is a little passage from Jamie Koufmans website.
http://www.voiceinstituteofnewyork.com/patient-services/treatments/diagnosis-treatment-of-chronic-cough/
"REACTIVE UPPER AND LOWER AIRWAY DISEASE
The population of patients with reactive airway disease is bimodal, with the larger group having asthma (reactive lower airway disease) and the smaller group having reactive upper airway disease, i.e., variable airway obstruction at the laryngeal level. The hallmark of the former is wheezing, and the latter is stridor. Despite some medical literature to the contrary, there is not a lot of overlap between the stridor and wheezing groups.5
Of the roughly 10-15% of my patients present with symptoms described as “choking,” most turn out to have LPR-related laryngospasm (LS), as opposed to dysphagia or aspiration (Table 1). In addition, many LS patients, as well as those with paradoxical vocal fold movement (PVFM), are mistakenly diagnosed as having asthma. In such cases, careful history taking will almost always reveal that such patients have inspiratory stridor and not wheezing.5
There are patients who have both LPR and asthma; however, the combination of “asthma” with intractable chronic cough increases the likelihood that LPR is the cause or is a factor. As mentioned above, many of my LS and PFVM reactive upper airway disease patients have been misdiagnosed as having adult-onset asthma; but coincidentally, the breathing problems often began at the time of other LPR symptoms. To the point, some “asthma” patients are cured by antireflux treatment. In any event, defining respiratory/airway symptoms accurately is the first job of the clinician; and some patterns are associated with specific diagnoses (Table 2)"
Post Edited (TheSixness) : 7/14/2013 6:17:25 PM (GMT-6)