Cardiac asthma: new insights into an old disease.

Tsuyoshi Tanabe, Henry J Rozycki, Soichiro Kanoh, Bruce K Rubin

Department of Pediatrics, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU, Richmond, VA, USA.

Expert review of respiratory medicine 2012 Dec

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Cardiac asthma has been defined as wheezing, coughing and orthopnea due to congestive heart failure. The clinical distinction between bronchial asthma and cardiac asthma can be straight forward, except in patients with chronic lung disease coexisting with left heart disease. Pulmonary edema and pulmonary vascular congestion have been thought to be the primary causes of cardiac asthma but most patients have a poor response to diuretics. There appears to be limited effectiveness of classical asthma medications like bronchodilators or corticosteroids in treating cardiac asthma. Evidence suggests that circulating inflammatory factors and tissue growth factors also lead to airway obstruction suggesting the possibility of developing novel therapies.

Citation

Tsuyoshi Tanabe, Henry J Rozycki, Soichiro Kanoh, Bruce K Rubin. Cardiac asthma: new insights into an old disease. Expert review of respiratory medicine. 2012 Dec;6(6):705-14