What is a pediatric allergist?
Your pediatrician may recommend a visit with a pediatric allergist if your child has the following symptoms:
Pediatric allergists use skin and blood tests to identify allergen triggers, and they help manage patients’ symptoms.
What conditions does a pediatric allergist treat?
Some children with asthma symptoms have increased coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath when they are exposed to pollen, mold spores, house dust, or animal danders. These exposures may increase your child’s need for more frequent or stronger medications to control symptoms. An allergist can identify and treat environmental asthma triggers so your child will have fewer symptoms and be less dependent on rescue and controller medications. Children with severe or difficult-to-control asthma may benefit from management by a team of specialists including the allergist, a pulmonary specialist, and a respiratory therapist.
It is important to identify the environmental triggers of your child’s symptoms so that avoidance measures and medications can work together to provide relief. Allergy injections containing pollen or other allergens may be needed for children with difficult-to-control symptoms. These injections help the body’s immune system to develop a tolerance to the allergen.
Children with recurrent ear or sinus infections are frequently referred by their pediatrician or ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist for evaluation of an underlying allergic cause of the infections.
In addition, at McLane Children’s, we treat the following:
- Food allergies, including the common allergies to soy, wheat, nuts, and dairy
- Medication allergies
- Insect bite allergies
- Airborne allergies that cause rhinitis
- Allergies that cause sinusitis
- Anaphylaxis (This is a life-threatening allergic reaction that is caused by food, drugs, or insect stings. A pediatric allergist can identify the cause and provide specific treatment guidelines.)
- Hives and eczema (These skin diseases may be caused by an allergic reaction that an allergist can identify and then recommend appropriate treatment.)
- Immune deficiencies (Children with recurrent, severe, or unusual infections may have an abnormality in a part of the immune system that helps fight infection. These problems can be identified and treated by a pediatric allergist working with other specialists in infectious disease, hematology/oncology, gastroenterology, and dermatology.)
We also treat other diseases:
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