Contact 
Locations .png){kind=icon}
Call Respiratory Care
Asthma and Respiratory Conditions
Breathing and upper-airway symptoms often overlap. Use these guides to distinguish likely patterns and connect symptoms with objective testing, urgent warning signs, and the appropriate next visit.
How to Use This Guide
Start with the clinical question
Upper and lower airways can affect each other
Nasal allergy, chronic sinus inflammation, nasal polyps, asthma, chronic cough, and exercise symptoms can occur together, but each requires its own evidence. Track congestion, smell, drainage, nighttime cough, wheeze, activity limits, reliever use, infections, and steroid courses rather than describing every episode simply as an allergy flare.
Bring objective respiratory records
Prior spirometry or pulmonary-function tracings, chest or sinus imaging, ENT examinations, emergency notes, inhalers, and medication history help distinguish uncontrolled asthma, upper-airway disease, technique problems, and conditions needing pulmonary or ENT review. Severe breathing difficulty, blue or gray lips, confusion, faintness, or rapidly worsening symptoms require emergency care.
Explore the Directory
Explore asthma and respiratory conditions
Choose the asthma and respiratory conditions guide that most closely matches the symptom, diagnosis, test, or treatment question you want to understand.
Asthma Evaluation and Diagnosis
Learn how asthma is evaluated with symptom history, spirometry, bronchodilator response, and targeted tests while other causes of breathing symptoms are considered.
View guideChronic Sinusitis (Chronic Rhinosinusitis) Evaluation
Chronic sinusitis evaluation combines at least 12 weeks of compatible symptoms with objective findings from examination, nasal endoscopy, or CT when appropriate.
View guideNasal Polyps Evaluation and Treatment
Nasal polyps are inflammatory growths confirmed by examination or endoscopy. Care may include topical therapy, surgery, or biologic treatment for selected patients.
View guideChronic Cough
Explore how persistent cough is evaluated for asthma, upper-airway disease, allergy, reflux, medication effects, infection, and other possible causes.
View guideExercise-Induced Bronchoconstriction
Learn about exercise-induced bronchoconstriction symptoms, testing, inhaler planning, and ways to stay active while controlling breathing problems.
View guide
A Focused Next Step
Connect the guide with the right appointment
The asthma and respiratory conditions directory groups the pages that answer different parts of the evaluation or treatment decision. Open the closest match, note the unanswered question, and bring the source records described there.
For asthma and respiratory conditions, the scheduling team can use that question to identify a relevant clinic, provider, and appointment type.
Connect Symptoms With Objective Findings
Choose the respiratory guide by location, timing, and trigger pattern
Start by identifying where the problem seems to occur. Nasal blockage, loss of smell, facial pressure, and prolonged drainage point toward an upper-airway evaluation. Wheeze, chest tightness, variable cough, nighttime symptoms, or exercise limitation may require an asthma-focused history and objective airflow testing. A cough can also arise from upper-airway disease, reflux, infection, medication effects, inducible laryngeal obstruction, or another pulmonary condition, so duration alone does not establish the cause.
Record when symptoms occur, whether they vary by season or location, what happens with exercise or respiratory infections, nighttime waking, reliever use, oral steroid courses, urgent visits, and response to prior treatment. Bring the inhaler and spacer to the visit so technique can be reviewed. Original spirometry curves, bronchodilator results, FeNO values, imaging, nasal endoscopy reports, and hospital records are more useful than a note saying a test was “normal” or “abnormal.”
Testing should answer a defined question. Spirometry can identify airflow limitation and measure change after a bronchodilator; it does not identify every cause of breathlessness. FeNO can add information about one pattern of airway inflammation but does not establish asthma by itself. Nasal endoscopy can document polyps, drainage, and visible inflammation, while imaging is reserved for questions that cannot be answered from symptoms and examination alone.
Before the visit, separate baseline symptoms from attacks. Note the best and worst days, the duration of each episode, whether symptoms interrupt sleep or activity, and which medicine was used before improvement. Include tobacco, vaping, workplace, home, pet, mold, wildfire-smoke, and exercise exposures when they fit the timing. This record helps the clinician compare upper-airway, lower-airway, infectious, environmental, and non-respiratory explanations without assuming that one trigger accounts for every episode.
The respiratory directory separates condition, testing, and treatment intent. Open a condition guide to understand the diagnostic pattern, a testing guide to prepare for an objective measurement, and a treatment guide when the diagnosis is established and the question is control, technique, monitoring, or escalation. When symptoms span the nose, sinuses, throat, and lungs, list each pattern separately so one label does not hide a second problem.
Find care for asthma and respiratory conditions
Review the Modena Health clinic nearest you, then contact scheduling with the specific asthma and respiratory conditions question you want the visit to answer.
