Pediatric Allergy Services at Children’s Chest Clinic

Allergic problems are on the rise and one out of three children are suffering from some form of allergy.

What are the common allergy related problems in children?

Atopic dermatitis or eczema is the earliest form of allergy seen in infants and young children. Common respiratory allergy related conditions in children are persistent cough, asthma and nasal allergy. Allergy skin problems like hives or urticaria and angioedema are also common in India. Anaphylaxis is a multisystem allergy reaction which can be fatal if unrecognized and not timely treated. Food allergy was previously thought to be uncommon but now are increasingly being recognized in children in India. Drug allergy is also not uncommon in children. It is seen with antibiotics especially penicillin group, pain killer medicines (ibuprofen etc) and anaesthetic drugs.

What are pediatric allergy services at Children’s Chest Clinic?

We strive to provide specialized care to children with all allergy related issues under one roof. Our allergy services include diagnostic services like lung function testing, skin allergy testing and drug allergy testing.

Pulmonary Function Testing

Lung function testing or pulmonary function testing is very useful in evaluation of children with chronic cough and is the confirmatory test for asthma diagnosis. We have a state of the art CareFusion Jeager Spirometry and Impulse Oscillometry. The Jaeger spirometry software has animations or games which helps a young child perform spirometry easily. We can perform a lung function test in young children from around 3 years of age with the Impulse Oscillometry system.

Skin Prick Testing

Children with nasal allergy and asthma require evaluation of aeroallergens (also called environmental allergens) like dust mites, cat/dog dander, insects like cockroach, moulds and pollens of grasses, trees and weeds. The gold standard of testing aeroallergens is skin allergy testing or skin prick testing. We use standardized allergens from Allergopharma (Germany) for allergy diagnosis. Food allergy diagnosis also require skin allergy testing with the concerned food allergen. Common food allergen are milk, egg, soy, fish, peanuts and treenuts. This is also performed with skin allergy testing or skin prick testing. We sometimes also evaluate children with blood allergy testing with an ImmunoCap testing for relevant allergen. Drug allergy in children require careful evaluation with circumstantial history and sometimes drug allergy testing with skin prick test and intradermal testing.