Pulmicort side effects in toddlers?

[jnjhart]

Our 19 month old son has been on pulmicort for about 6 months. We give it to him twice a day with no side effects. The 2 asthma attacks he had previous to this landed us in the emergency room for breathing treatments of albuterol every 3 hours. A couple of days ago, he was having a dry cough and labored breathing at daycare. My wife rushed him to the emergency room where his breathing was clerened up by Xopenex (albuterol I believe) and we are continuing to administer Xopopnex every 3 to 4 hours and we have an oral steroid which he is on for the second day. His breathing is getting better, but he still appeatrs to need the albuterol. He hasn't had much of the oral steroid, but we'll see the side effects if he has any. Our son, Colton, has asthma, is prone to febrile seizures and multiple food allergies (dairy, eggs, soy and peanuts). I'm not that big of a fan of overmedicating, but what are you going to do in this cuircumstance, right?

Good luck and thank you to everyone out there posting information.

[horseygirl14]

Your stories sound a lot like my 5, soon to be 6 year old son. He had his first asthma attack at the age of 28 months and was hospitalized for 3-4 days. His next hospitalization was in December 2006 a week before christmas for 2 days. He has had about 5 trips to the ER for asthmatic episodes since then. At first we noticed it seemed to be only when he had a cold but now he is showing signs of having episodes when being exposed to furry animals. He had a bad reaction to a dog once. He also has a peanut allergy and his other allergy tests at 3 years old came up negative. I plan on having him tested again in the near future. We use his flovent only when he shows signs of a cough or wheezing. He is also on ventolin during a flareup. He uses nasonex during the spring, summer and fall for seasonal allergies. All in all he is pretty managed but it definitely is frustrating and there is a delicate balance. When he is healthy and showing no symptoms the dr. prefers if he is not on the flovent so we try to keep on top of him and keep him managed.

Good luck to everyone.

[tclem]

My 7 yr old son has been on Pulmicort for about a year. We haven't noticed any side effects but the medicine has worked wonders. We have greatly reduced his flare ups and any colds he gets are also much shorter in length. In addition to the Pulmicort which he takes 2x a day, he takes Singulair and Zyrtec.

[SheaUSMC]

I did a little more looking into the behavior complaints, as I said I haven't had any problems with that. However, if you do a web search for "ask a patient," you will find a place where tons of people post their experiences with meds, and behavioral changes is a common complaint with pulmicort.

[violetsmom13]

Thank you for the tip SheaUSMC. That web site scared me a little bit! My daughter certainly changed when we gave her the Pulmicort twice a day while she had a cold. For the past seven days we have given it to her once a day, and she has been normal. I still feel overwhelmed by this decision. Is her asthma serious enough to warrant a daily medication? I worry about giving it to her, and I worry about not giving it to her! She has gotten so good at using the nebulizer, though. I wonder if her two attacks last fall were so serious because we couldn't give her the albuterol effectively at home. She screamed and thrashed and barely got any into her lungs! I never thought I'd be such an indecisive parent!