Please Help!! When my son was 2 months old he was diagnosed with RSV and hospitalized for 3 days. We were told to use a nuebulizer filled with Xopenex. Now, at 4 months, he has been diagnosed with reacitve airway disease. We are using the nebulizer agian, this time filled with Albuterol. He is weezy and seems to be congested all the time. Has anyone ever heard of this before? Isn't Albuterol used to treat asthma? Does this diagnoses mean that he is more prone to contracting asthma? What can we do at home to stop the weezing and congestion? He is still VERY happy and extremely palyful in the 75th percentile in everything. Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks!
Garner898

When my son was 7 weeks old, he started with the constant wheezing and congestion.(It was summertime too, odd time for chronic congestion)I was told at first it was croup, then RSV,then reactive airway disease,then maybe cystic fib., then a million other things that it could be. He lived with the nebulizor attached to his face, but it rarely did any good. I finally took him to a pulmonologist ( a lung specialist). He didn't think it was asthma, although it is very common in both mine and my husbands families. He did a bronchoscopy, where the put a camera down his throat and into the airway. Turns out he had what the doctor called in layman's terms "floppy airway". this is where the cartlige under the voice box hasn't fully hardened, so it flopps over the airway when he breaths, thus causing a wheezing sound, and for some reason the congestion. It is harmless. The doc said it would clear up by the time he hit one, and it did. When he gets sick,though, with a cold or anything, he sounds kinda wheezy. He is now 2, does not have asthma,(knock on wood)and in perfect health. One more thing I forgot to mention, I don't know if this will apply to you, but in our case, we also lived in a very old house. In the attic there was insulation falling down,it was always very dusty, needless to say wasn't a place we wanted to live, it was temporary until we moved into our new house. Since moving, he rarely ever is sick, whereas before he constantly had bronchitis,congestion, it was everyday living for him. We chalk it up to our new house, the enviornment is just cleaner.
Not to say that this is what's wrong with your baby, but I would strongly suggest that he sees a pulmonolist. Hope this helped a little.ANP

[This message has been edited by ANP (edited 04-07-2001).]

My son has the same condition. The noise is called stridor, I think. He had a two broncoscopys done before he was 6 months old. I'm probally going to spell this wrong but they ended up calling it laringomalacia which means undeveloped cartlidge in the trachea. He is now almost 4 and it has gotten so much better. You can hear it sometimes when he is really relaxed or playing really hard. Every now and then he does get croup. I dont think that has anything to do with it though. It used to be very scary when he was an infant. It sounded as if something was blocking his airway.