Asthma Capstone

The capstone meant to demonstrate the knowledge that students gained throughout the four years of attending Southwest Career & Technical Academy. The objective of this capstone was to find a prominent problem in the local community that is related to the experiences from the program areas. A prominent problem in the valley is asthma and the possible attacks that can be lethal if necessary precautions are not taken. People with or without asthma should be informed of the do’s and do not’s of taking care of the patients and be able to spread that information amongst the people that do not know it already. The question that needed to be answered was, “What information about asthma should be shared with the community to assist with the problem
of asthma who will it affect?” Based on a statistic from the World Health Organization, an estimated three-hundred million people around the entire world suffer having asthma and a common activator is strenuous exercise, which makes symptoms worse for many people (American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology) If one were to compare the amount of people affected by asthma in the world to the population of The United States of America, there are around three-hundred eighteen million people living in America and three-hundred million people with asthma. That is a little over ninety-four percent of America’s population being affected by asthma. Asthma is a long-term disease that has no cure in and the way best treatment of is control of asthma (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute). Asthma can affect people in different levels of severity and having such a large amount of people with high variability in their symptoms makes creating one single treatment can prove to be very difficult. One form of asthma is exercise-induced asthma (EIA)/exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB). Like the name implies, symptoms of exercise-induced bronchoconstriction are activated by long periods of strenuous exercises. People that are affected by exercise-induced bronchoconstriction may have problems breathing within five to twenty minutes of exercising, feeling symptoms of: wheezing, tight pressure on the chest, cough, shortness of breath, and chest pains (American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology). Experiencing these symptoms during or after an exercise can prove to be problematic for asthmatics because having an inhaler with albuterol readily accessible. During an attack, if the symptoms are severe enough, the person can be seriously injured or experience death. Regardless of not being able to fully exercise, exercising is still recommended for most people because of the many benefits it has to prolonging life. Being active is an important way to live a healthy lifestyle and asthma should not stop a person from not having that life (American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology). There are ways to make exercise-induced bronchoconstriction to make exercising possible for people that are affected. The first step for people that have exercise-induced bronchoconstriction is to develop a treatment plan with a physician.
A physician or an allergist is able to determine the severity of asthma and determine the specific medications that can be taken for specific approved exercises (American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology). The physician would have the person affected by asthma do only specific exercises that would not be too hard on the lungs and have a warm up before the exercise gets too hard. Specific sports that involve cold and dry environments like basketball or gymnastics would cause the symptoms to flare up. Some swimming events that have a warmer and a more humid environment would be the recommended sports for the ones affected by exercise-induced bronchoconstriction. Medications like mast cell stabilizers, inhaled steroid, and leukotriene modifiers should be taken regularly. Prior to exercising, short acting beta-agonists like albuterol should be taken (World Allergy Organization). Those medications are strong enough to keep the lungs healthy for exercise and kept near for precautionary
measures. Another form of asthma is occupational asthma, asthma symptoms being activated by the working environment of an individual. Occupational asthma is often caused by the inhalation of fumes, gases, dust or other harmful substances that can be exposed to during their job (American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology). People that are mainly affected by this are the ones that work in the factories and construction sites. People in factories are in enclosed spaces with chemicals gradually being vented out. If those workers do not have the correct equipment, their chances of having symptoms be activated more often and more severely. Construction workers of a house or office building have to deal with saw dust from construction and asbestos from the deconstruction of older buildings. Exposure to high doses of other irritants that induce occupational asthma include hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and ammonia; those materials are commonly found in the petroleum or chemical industries (American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology). Occupational asthma limits people that are affected to jobs that do not have them in an enclosed space with chemicals that are known to activate their symptoms. Communication with the employer can be key to treating occupational asthma because they will be able to inform the employee of different aspects of the job that can assist in deciding if that career path is the correct one for the occupational asthma conditions. There are many other forms of asthma that are common as well. Allergic asthma is an asthma that occurs when an allergy sets off the asthma reaction. Some irritants that can flare up the allergic asthma are mold roaches and pets (Mother Nature Network). Allergic asthma would require an extra tool for precautions like an epinephrine pen should also be taken along with the inhalers. The epinephrine pen contains epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline. The adrenaline causes the smooth muscles in the lung to relax when they are tense and make breathing difficult, but makes the breathing intense. Also, to the heart, epinephrine binds to the beta-adrenergic receptors on the heart and causes it to beat at an increased pace to have blood go through the body at a quicker rate, carrying more oxygen (News Medical). When people are having an allergic reaction, they often have a difficult time breathing because of the swelling in different locations in the body. Another common type of asthma is non-allergic asthma.
Non-allergic asthma is a respiratory infection like a cold, flu, and the rhinovirus can set off the asthma symptoms (Mother Nature Network).
Those infections are common so having people with non-allergic asthma can have it come off anytime during the seasons where the cold and flu are very common. Those times would include the winter and spring time because of the weather and the increase of pollen that is scattered throughout the air. To assist people with non-allergic asthma, corticosteroid for around ten to fourteen days should be administered through oral means like an inhaler or nebulizer treatments (Mother Nature Network). Corticosteroids are very strong medicines that can relieve inflammations around the body. Though the body does produce natural cortisone-like hormones, it will not produce enough to keep the inflammations relaxed consistently. There are other factors that can affect people that have
asthma.
If people are exposed to: tobacco smoke, air pollution, pollen, animal dander, deodorants, dust mites, and perfumes, they can have their symptoms be triggered in different severities (Medical News Today). Las Vegas is filled with many locations that have the listed irritants in abundance. The casinos, bars and other smoking is allowed is not a place that people that have asthma should be at. Asthma can be activated by more than just irritants, bodily issues can have an effect on it too. Having viral infections, having a consistent exposure of stress, living in cold dry environments, and consuming sulfites in dried food and wine are different ways that asthma symptoms are triggered. (World Allergy Organization). Maintaining a control over the environment at home and physical state is important in the prevention of the symptoms and attacks. Prior to the capstone night, there was a process of researching and creating the presentation for the night where community members are coming from all around to witness the creations of the students during their senior year. The asthma pair gathered different documents that involved asthma and sifted through to find the important information and repetition that was unnecessary. Some repetition of specific information was acceptable in the documents because it confirmed the sayings of another document. Once the research was finished, the duo needed to think of an easy medium to transfer the information from one to another. Different ideas like, posters, advertisements on magazines or newspapers, and even a news report, but the simplest and easily accessible was a flyer. The flyer is easily held by the people and passed along, it can be made in mass and within a reasonable amount of time, so it was a practical option from the rest. Even if a flyer is let out into the wind, there is a possibility that it will that it can end up in a trash can, but there is also the possibility that it can end up in the hands of someone that needs to learn about asthma for their own reasons. The next step for the pair was deciding on an electronic deliverable. Power point was used often by most groups in the past, so a new type of slideshow application was found on Piktochart. Easy to make graphics were put together with different parts of the research came together nicely for a visual on the screen for those viewing the presentation. Another aspect of the presentation that the pair needed to think of was a physical deliverable. At this point time was scarce and it needed to be created for the presentation. The asthma group created a poster board surrounded by different devices that asthma affected people are commonly exposed to like an inhaler and a nebulizer kit. Those were simple, could convey a message of asthma easily to people that would like to watch the presentation.
During the capstone night, the students set up their presentations with electronic devices or other visual aids that they felt necessary to convey their messages to the community members that were visiting. For a period of two hours, people came and went through the H building to view the exhibits laid out by the students. The community members that visited the asthma presentation were interested by the information that was accumulated throughout the year. They were asking about different aspects of asthma that was easily answered by the flyers that were made for the community. Multiple copies of the flyers were handed out across the evening to different people that did not know anything about asthma or people that had asthma that felt the information given was substantial enough to pass on to others. A notable audience member was James Campbell, the dean of Southwest Career and Technical Academy. He shared his own personal connections to the information that was available because he is currently still affected by the asthma. Since that was with him since childhood, and now other family members, he has very accurate insight about the asthma presentation on whether or not it was accurate. Another notable attendee of the asthma presentation was the anatomy teacher, Jennifer Conder. She is another person that is affected by asthma and felt that the information given was enough for the people that had no idea of the different aspects of asthma.
Helping out the community through spreading basic information that can prevent fatalities and issues about asthma is one of the closest methods to curing asthma. Exercise-induced bronchoconstriction and occupational asthma are two of many other forms of asthma that can be treated through early preventions.