Treatment Plan
Decision to start intervention or treatment is the result of agreement between the doctor and patient or parent, if underage.
This depends on the diagnosis and result of investigations, as well as the best available and acceptable option by the patient.
The process of treatment is usually on multiple levels. This is to ensure maximum benefit. This will include these areas:
- Education: Knowing your diagnosis or problem is the first and most important step in understanding the treatment needed.
- Special investigations: these help confirm the clinical suspicion of the problem. It will guide the future expectation of the disease and can be used as a measure of success of treatment.
- Avoidance: By avoiding the environmental causes of the allergy we can reduce symptoms and help the tissues heal.
- Specific treatment: this is directed against the specific problem. An example would be changing to special milk formula for a milk allergic child. Startinv a controller medication for asthma to get normal sleep and exercise.
- Preventing future allergies: starting allergy specific immunotherapy is proven to reduce the risk of developing asthma in the future in children who have allergic rhinitis.
In most cases follow-up is extremely important. It is needed to ensure proper response to intervention and to make decisions about when to reduce, increase, ir stop medication. Repeat allergy testing for food allergy can help inderstand ahen the allergy is gone and when good can be taken again.