Professor Katherine Newsham was recently awarded a grant by the Mid-America Athletic Trainer’s Association (MAATA) for her study of exercise induced dyspnea.
Dyspnea is defined as abnormal or uncomfortable breathing in the context of what is normal for a person according to his or her level of fitness and exertion threshold for breathlessness. Dyspnea is a common symptom and can be caused by many different conditions.
Although other causes may be involved, the cardiac and pulmonary systems are most frequently involved in diagnosis of dyspnea.
Exercise-induced dyspnea, or EID, is a common problem for athletes and is often thought of as the increase of asthmatic like symptoms during the act of exercising.
This includes shortness of breath, pain in the ribs or side.When an athlete reaches the point that he or she needs to seeks medical care, they are often diagnosed with exercise induced bronchospasm.
Unfortunately, as many as 40 percent of these diagnoses are inaccurate, meaning some other condition, possibly dyspnea, is causing the problem.
The inaccurate diagnoses can contribute to increased physician visits, increased medical testing and increased cost of managing the condition to say nothing of the frustration experienced by the athletic patient.
“We believe that a diagnostic testing protocol that emphasizes ‘point of care’ testing and minimal specialized equipment could provide the athletic health care team with objective measures to guide the development of an appropriate plan of treatment while minimizing costs and time often associated with evaluation of EID” said Newsham.
Newsham’s study will try to diagnose what exact symptoms can be defined as dyspnea and what is the best way to test for it.
”This grant provides us with funding to purchase test kits that evaluate exercise induced bronchospasm and we are utilizing the facilities, equipment, and expertise of the SLU faculty in various disciplines to evaluate other conditions, including vocal cord dysfunction,” Newsham said.
Athletes and exercise enthusiasts everywhere can hopefully prevent the rudimentary pain of exercise with this knowledge.
Chris Janson, a sophomore, said “Now that [I’m in college] I don’t work out as regularly. If I didn’t know what was going on then I would think I would have to go to the doctor to try to figure what is wrong. Something like this study could help me and other people realize that problems with breathing was a much less of a problem than originally thought.”
The team working with Newsham on the grant includes Ethel Freese, of the Program in Physical Therapy; Blakelee Noyes, of Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center; Dennis Fuller, of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders; and Richard McGuire, also of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
