Asthma in pregnancy: Physiology, diagnosis, and management

Asthma is a common, potentially serious, medical condition that affects an estimated 8% of pregnant patients, with 4% of all pregnant patients experiencing an exacerbation in the past year. Practitioners must be able to diagnose, educate, and treat such patients as they undergo significant physiological and immunologic change. But staying current can be challenging given over 3000 citations for “asthma and pregnancy” in a recent PubMed search, with 750 described as review articles. Patients have even more difficulty navigating information, with 29 million Google search results for this same query and 1.2 million alone for the question whether asthma medications are safe during pregnancy. This review provides brief answers to important management questions followed by supporting background literature.