Pediatric Severe Asthma Clinic
Hasbro Children’s Hospital’s Severe Asthma Clinic is a collaboration of the pediatric pulmonology and the pediatric allergy and immunology departments. Through this clinic, we offer a multidisciplinary approach to treating children whose severe asthma is poorly controlled despite treatment with typical asthma medications.
What Is Severe Asthma?
More than 26 million Americans have asthma, and about 7 million of them are children. While most have mild to moderate asthma, about 10 percent have severe asthma that typical medications don’t control. Those with severe asthma have frequent asthma attacks, and often, using more than one inhaler isn’t enough to control symptoms.
If your child has severe asthma, you may have sought treatment for your child at a hospital emergency department, as 1.8 million asthma patients do each year.
Our Severe Asthma Clinical Team Can Help
A pediatric pulmonologist, allergist/immunologist, pharmacist, social worker, certified asthma educator, and respiratory therapist are among the experts who will work with you and your child.
When needed, we work closely with our colleagues in gastroenterology, otolaryngology, psychology, psychiatry, and sleep medicine to ensure that every child gets the most effective care.
Meet our pediatric severe asthma team
Services for Pediatric Asthma Patients
Our services include:
- Testing for environmental allergies
- Comprehensive pulmonary function testing (spirometry, lung volumes, FeNO )
- Immunotherapy for environmental and seasonal allergies (allergy shots)
- Biologic therapies
- Social work services
- Patient and family education programs
- Full-service laboratory facilities
- On-campus Lifespan Pharmacy
- Hospital inpatient care at Hasbro Children's Hospital, if necessary
- A specialist on call 24 hours a day for emergencies
Asthma Is a Growing Problem
Asthma has been on the rise since the early 1980s, and the percentage of young Rhode Islanders who are affected exceeds the national average. At Hasbro Children’s Hospital’s Severe Asthma Clinic, we take a team approach to bringing a young patient’s asthma under control.
If your child has severe asthma, you know how it affects his or her daily life. Asthma may impair a child’s ability to play, compete in sports, attend school, and get restful sleep. Unchecked, it can be life-threatening. If your child struggles with severe asthma, the experts of the Severe Asthma Clinic at Hasbro Children’s Hospital can help. We offer comprehensive evaluation and a personalized treatment plan. Medications such as biologic therapies often work better than typical asthma inhalers.
Biologic Therapy for Asthma
Biologic therapy may help bring your son's or daughter’s severe asthma under control. These medicines, given by injection or by intravenous infusion every few weeks, work by targeting a cell or protein in the body that stimulates airway inflammation.
If your child’s physicians prescribe biologic therapy, it can be administered at the Pediatric Respiratory and Immunology Center in partnership with Lifespan Pharmacy.
Treatment for Severe Asthma
After consultation with our specialists in the Severe Asthma Clinic and comprehensive diagnostic testing, a treatment plan will be developed for your child’s particular needs.
During follow-up visits, the team at the Severe Asthma Clinic will evaluate your child’s progress and adjust treatments as needed to keep him or her on the path to better health and an improved quality of life.