Portable and ready to go in a minute, peak flow meters can be an important tool in your child’s arsenal of devices to manage her asthma symptoms. This small hand-held device, which measures how efficiently your child can move air out of her lungs, can move you away from just visually looking for asthma symptoms.

By having your child blow into the plastic or metal tube, a little pointer can indicate how much her airways are constricted. It will let you know if she needs some additional medications to help her breathing. It also will let you know if she’s showing signs of exercise induced asthma. And, it will let you know if she needs her quick relief medication right now.

Basically, the peak flow meter focuses on getting a quick, objective measurement to comprehend how she is breathing at any given point in time. Peak flow meters are available over-the-counter from a variety of vendors, and they’re fairly easy for children at least five years or older to use.

Why Use Peak Flow Monitoring?

A peak flow meter lets your child measure variations in his breathing every day no matter where he is. When his asthma is under control, his airways are open and he can forcefully exhale more air into the peak flow meter. On those good days when he has few asthma symptoms, he can designate a “personal best” score obtained from peak flow readings taken twice a day over a two-week period that he can designate as a benchmark on his asthma action plan.

When his breathing is at or near this personal best, he is having a good day as indicated on the “green zone” (or in-control zone) on his asthma action plan. His peak flow rates will be 80 to 100 percent of his personal best an indication that his asthma is under control, and he has no asthma signs or symptoms. However, if his airways are constricted and inflamed, his reading will be lower. He will find himself in the yellow zone (caution) if his peak flow rates are 50 to 80 percent of his personal best.

If he no longer is able to blow as hard into the meter, this is a sign that his asthma is getting worse. If his peak flow rates are less than 50 percent of his personal best rate, he will be in the red zone (warning) on his action plan. This indicates an impending emergency where prompt action must be taken. This will make his peak flow rate lower.

When to Use It

Your child’s physician may recommend using a peak flow meter at least once a day usually before taking her asthma medication in the morning if she has moderate or severe asthma. Current guidelines usually do not recommended daily peak flow monitoring for patients with milder cases of asthma unless that patient, her family, and her health care provider find it useful in guiding treatment decisions.

To help better monitor her peak flow meter use, consider using it at the same time each day and recording her readings in an asthma diary. This actually can be any sheet of paper or a computer program where she can mark the reading and the data.

This information will help you, your child, and her physician to monitor and the severity of her asthma the effectiveness of her current treatment and asthma management plan, if certain medications should be added or stopped, if signs or symptoms appear to point to an asthma flare-up, if emergency care might be necessary and if exercise-induced asthma is being triggered.

Peak flow readings that show little change when your child is feeling well and when she is having what appear to be asthma symptoms indicate that it might not be asthma at all. But, if the peak flow values drop by more than 20 percent between that period of feeling well and feeling symptomatic, it may be signs of asthma.

Putting the Peak Flow Meter to Use

Using the peak flow meter to determine your child’s peak flow rate requires just a few easy steps. Remember to have him hold the meter without holding the numbers and to remove any food or gum from his mouth:

1. Move the marker to the bottom of the numbered scale.
2. Connect the mouthpiece to the meter.
3. Stand up and then take a strong, deep breath (to expand his lungs).
4. Place lips around the mouthpiece, and blow hard and quickly in a single breath.
5. Review the final position of the marker. This will indicate his peak flow rate.

After repeating this procedure twice, have him record the highest reading of the three in his asthma diary for the next two to three weeks. And remember, to keep the peak flow meter operating correctly, continue to clean it following manufacturers’ directions. Finally, bear in mind that as your child grows, his “personal best” peak flow will increase as his height increases, requiring that a new “personal best” be documented in his asthma action plan.

For more information on how to treat bronchial asthma and protect your loved ones to suffer bronchial asthma again. Please go to The Asthma Relief Report.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Asthma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.