Smoking and Children With Asthma

Sunday, July 19, 2009, 19:52
Asthma
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Gina:

As a lung specialist, what do you tell people about smoking?

Dr. Redding:

There are two lines of responses to tobacco use in homes of children who have asthma. The first is to say remove the irritant from the child’s environment. That’s much more doable and often more acceptable. By that, I mean that families, and particularly siblings, older siblings and parents, should smoke outside. They shouldn’t smoke inside the car. And if you’re dealing with infants who happen to be on the shoulders of their parents, then I suggest that parents change their clothes after they’ve smoked outside so when they come back in, the baby’s face is not in the smoke-embedded clothing. The second piece of advice is for parents to stop smoking. Now, as most physicians will tell you, that’s not a futile effort, but it is an effort that is unlikely to be successful in a majority of patients. We know, for example, that mothers usually don’t stop smoking if fathers persist in smoking, and so often in order to make tobacco exposure less severe, we need to talk to the entire family.

It’s not fair to bring in the mother alone and discuss smoking if the father is smoking. It’s not fair to make one parent the intermediary for your discussions about tobacco cessation if the other parent isn’t there. It’s a very difficult topic. That shouldn’t mean that it’s one we should all shy away from. Indeed, I think it has to be addressed up front, not only for the health of the child, but for the health of the parents.

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