Panic Attack vs Asthma Attack: Breathing Symptoms and Medical Differences
Updated: Oct 8
Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 30, 2026 · Editorial Policy
A panic attack and an asthma attack can both cause shortness of breath, chest tightness, a racing heart, dizziness, and intense fear. Those overlaps are real enough that symptoms alone cannot always separate the two safely. Asthma is a disorder of the airways and can become medically dangerous; a panic attack is an acute episode of fear or discomfort with bodily symptoms and does not automatically mean a person has panic disorder. The safest distinction comes from the whole pattern: known asthma history, wheeze or cough, triggers, objective airflow measurements, response to an established asthma action plan, the timing and cognitive features of panic, and medical assessment when the picture is uncertain.
The most important practical rule is simple: do not decide that breathing difficulty is “just anxiety” because fear is present. Fear commonly accompanies genuine breathing distress. If you have diagnosed asthma and acute symptoms, follow your prescribed asthma action plan and use the reliever medicine exactly as your clinician instructed. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) advises emergency care when asthma medicines are not relieving symptoms or breathing remains very hard. New, severe, unusual, or rapidly worsening breathing symptoms also deserve a medical frame rather than an online self-diagnosis.
This page owns the narrow comparison intent “panic attack vs asthma attack.” For a broader map of bodily anxiety symptoms and their medical differentials, see Physical Symptoms of Anxiety: Heart, Breathing, Stomach, Muscles, and Dizziness. For the distinction between ordinary anxiety, panic attacks, and panic disorder, see Anxiety vs Panic: Worry, Fear, Panic Attacks, and Panic Disorder.
Panic Attack vs Asthma Attack: The Short Answer
Asthma becomes more plausible when the episode fits a respiratory pattern: recurrent wheeze, cough, chest tightness, or shortness of breath that varies over time; a known history of asthma; symptoms linked to allergens, respiratory infections, exercise, cold air, poor air quality, or other established triggers; and objective evidence of variable expiratory airflow. The Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) defines asthma through both characteristic variable respiratory symptoms and variable expiratory airflow. That second part matters because a sensation of “not getting enough air” is not specific to asthma.
Panic becomes more plausible when there is an abrupt surge of intense fear or discomfort accompanied by symptoms such as a pounding heart, trembling, sweating, dizziness, tingling or numbness, chest discomfort, difficulty breathing, nausea, derealization, or fear of losing control or dying. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) emphasizes that a panic attack is an episode; an isolated panic attack is not itself a mental disorder, and not everyone who has a panic attack develops panic disorder.
Neither pattern works as a home diagnostic test. Asthma can provoke fear and a racing heart. Panic can produce dramatic breathlessness and chest tightness. A person can also have asthma and panic at the same time. When the respiratory symptoms are new, unusually severe, different from a person's established pattern, or not responding to prescribed asthma rescue treatment, the uncertainty itself is a reason for medical assessment.
Why Panic and Asthma Can Feel So Similar
Breathing is unusually sensitive to both airway physiology and threat physiology. When airways narrow during an asthma flare, the effort of breathing increases and the person can feel chest tightness, air hunger, wheeze, coughing, or lightheadedness. When panic escalates, breathing may become faster or deeper, attention can lock onto respiratory sensations, and the person may experience air hunger, chest pressure, dizziness, tingling, or a sense of suffocation. The subjective experience can therefore converge even when the underlying mechanisms are different.
A review by Meuret and Ritz describes evidence linking hyperventilation and low carbon dioxide levels to some panic symptoms and also discusses respiratory dysregulation in asthma. The authors also make clear that simple respiratory theories do not explain every case. Hyperventilation is therefore a mechanism that may contribute to symptoms, not a shortcut for deciding that an episode is psychological.
This overlap is one reason differential diagnosis matters. A 2024 review by Tunnell and colleagues treats dyspnea, chest pain, palpitations, dizziness, and paresthesia as panic symptoms that can mimic medically important conditions. In the asthma comparison, the review points toward pulmonary function testing, bronchodilator reversibility, airway challenge testing, exhaled nitric oxide in selected settings, and the history of symptom triggers as useful parts of the medical distinction.
Breathing Symptoms: What the Pattern Can and Cannot Tell You
Shortness of Breath
Shortness of breath occurs in both conditions. In asthma, it reflects variable airway narrowing and airflow limitation. In panic, it may arise from rapid breathing, altered carbon dioxide levels, heightened respiratory drive, muscle tension, and intense attention to normal or stress-related breathing sensations. The feeling can be equally alarming in either case. Severity of fear does not tell you which mechanism is present.
People sometimes describe asthma as difficulty getting air out, while panic is described as inability to get a satisfying breath in. That contrast can be useful as part of a history, but it is not reliable enough to diagnose the episode. People use respiratory language inconsistently, and severe distress makes precise description harder. Clinicians therefore combine the description with examination, prior history, objective lung-function data, and the course of symptoms.
Wheezing
Wheezing supports an asthma explanation when it appears in the right clinical context, because asthma commonly produces variable expiratory airflow obstruction. Yet wheeze should be treated as a clue rather than a binary test. A person without obvious audible wheeze can still require asthma evaluation, while other airway conditions can also cause noisy breathing. The GINA diagnostic framework relies on the combination of variable symptoms and evidence of variable airflow rather than on wheeze alone.
In one older case-control study, Schmaling and Bell found that wheezing, coughing, and mucus congestion were among the symptoms that more strongly differentiated asthma from panic disorder in the study samples. That finding is clinically intuitive but should not be converted into a home rule-out rule: the study was relatively small, and individual attacks do not always reproduce textbook symptom patterns.
Cough and Mucus
Cough, recurrent respiratory symptoms, and mucus production fit asthma more naturally than a pure panic episode. Asthma involves airway inflammation and can involve swelling, narrowing, muscle tightening around the airways, and increased mucus. A cough that repeatedly appears with exercise, allergens, respiratory infections, cold air, or other established asthma triggers adds weight to the respiratory hypothesis. Panic can occur during coughing or breathlessness, but panic alone does not create the underlying inflammatory airway disorder.
Chest Tightness and Chest Pain
Chest tightness belongs to both symptom worlds. Asthma can cause tightness as narrowed airways increase breathing effort. Panic can cause chest pressure or pain through muscle tension, altered breathing, autonomic arousal, and catastrophic interpretation of bodily sensations. Because chest symptoms also occur in cardiac, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and musculoskeletal conditions, neither “it happened during fear” nor “it felt tight” identifies the cause.
New chest pain, collapse, severe weakness, blue or gray discoloration, marked breathing difficulty, or symptoms that are different from a person's usual pattern should be assessed as medical symptoms. The relevant question is not whether anxiety could explain them; it is whether a potentially serious medical cause has been adequately considered.
Dizziness, Tingling, and Numbness
Dizziness, lightheadedness, tingling, and numbness are common in panic attacks according to NIMH. Rapid or deep breathing can contribute to these sensations in some people by lowering carbon dioxide. They therefore add support to a panic or hyperventilation mechanism when they appear in a characteristic panic pattern. They are still nonspecific. Asthma itself can produce lightheadedness during an attack, and other cardiovascular, neurologic, metabolic, and respiratory causes remain possible.
Fear, Doom, and Loss of Control
A sudden sense of catastrophe, fear of dying, fear of losing control, or derealization is characteristic of panic phenomenology. Yet fear cannot function as a medical rule-out test. A person who is genuinely struggling to breathe from asthma can become terrified, and that secondary panic can amplify the experience. Clinically, it matters whether fear appears to be the primary rapidly escalating process, a response to respiratory obstruction, or part of a mixed episode.
Triggers and Timing
Asthma Triggers
Asthma attacks may be associated with allergens, viral respiratory infections, exercise, cold air, air pollution, occupational exposures, and other individualized triggers. NHLBI also lists emotional stress among factors that can set off or worsen asthma symptoms. This is an important boundary: an episode beginning during stress is not automatically panic, because stress and respiratory physiology can interact.
Panic Triggers
Panic attacks can occur in response to a feared situation, internal bodily sensations, accumulated stress, or without an obvious external trigger. An unexpected attack does not mean it has no physiology or context; it means the person cannot reliably tie the acute surge to a clear immediate danger or cue. Panic can also become conditioned to situations or body sensations after earlier attacks, so later episodes may feel increasingly predictable.
Does Duration Separate Them?
Duration is a weak discriminator. Panic typically escalates rapidly and often reaches peak intensity within minutes, but residual anxiety and physical sensations may last much longer. Asthma can worsen quickly or gradually and may fluctuate with treatment and trigger exposure. A rigid rule such as “if it lasts more than ten minutes it must be asthma” or “if it started suddenly it must be panic” is unsafe. Timing should be interpreted alongside airflow findings, respiratory history, triggers, and treatment response.
What Is Happening During an Asthma Attack?
Asthma is a heterogeneous airway disease usually characterized by chronic airway inflammation. During a flare, swelling and tightening can narrow the airways, and mucus may increase. The result is variable expiratory airflow limitation: air has more difficulty moving through narrowed airways, especially during exhalation. GINA's current diagnostic framework emphasizes the combination of variable respiratory symptoms and variable expiratory airflow, while NHLBI's asthma overview describes airway swelling, narrowing, mucus production, and tightening of the surrounding muscles.
This is why asthma diagnosis is not made from the emotional quality of an episode. A person can be calm and have asthma, frightened and have asthma, frightened and have panic, or have both simultaneously. The airway process has to be evaluated on its own terms.
What Is Happening During a Panic Attack?
A panic attack is an abrupt surge of intense fear or discomfort with a cluster of cognitive and physical symptoms. NIMH lists difficulty breathing, chest pain, a pounding or racing heart, trembling, sweating, dizziness, and tingling among recognized symptoms. These bodily sensations are genuine. A panic formulation explains how they arise and are amplified; it does not imply that the person is imagining them.
A panic attack also does not equal panic disorder. Current clinical classification requires a broader pattern for panic disorder, including recurrent unexpected attacks plus persistent concern, fear about their implications, or behavior change. The WHO ICD-11 Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements provides the current international clinical classification framework, while NIMH summarizes the practical diagnostic distinction for the public.
If you are unsure whether a severe episode was panic, asthma, or something else, the label should come after safety and assessment. For a broader diagnostic map, see Anxiety Disorders: Symptoms, Types, Diagnosis, and Treatment. If someone uses the phrase “anxiety attack,” remember that it is an informal expression rather than a separate formal diagnosis; see Anxiety Attack vs Panic Attack: What Is the Difference?.
Can Panic Trigger or Worsen Asthma Symptoms?
Yes, interaction is plausible and clinically relevant. Emotional stress is an established asthma trigger for some people, and respiratory changes during acute anxiety can alter the subjective and physiologic experience of breathing. The Meuret and Ritz review describes links among hyperventilation, hypocapnia, panic, and asthma physiology, while also noting uncertainty about simple one-mechanism explanations.
This does not mean that a panic attack “creates asthma” in a person who does not have the airway disease. It means that in someone with asthma, strong emotion, changes in breathing pattern, and airway sensitivity can interact. A panic-focused intervention may reduce one part of the cycle, while asthma still requires appropriate respiratory treatment and monitoring.
Can an Asthma Attack Trigger Panic?
Yes. Breathlessness is a powerful threat signal. A person who has experienced a frightening asthma flare may become hypervigilant to small respiratory changes, interpret them as the start of another severe attack, and enter a rapidly escalating fear cycle. This psychological response can coexist with real airway narrowing. Treating the fear without evaluating asthma, or treating asthma without recognizing severe panic and avoidance, can each leave an important part of the problem unaddressed.
Comorbidity is common enough to matter. A systematic review and meta-analysis by Ye, Baldwin, and Hou pooled 19 studies with 106,813 participants and found anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders more frequently among people with asthma than among non-asthma controls. The pooled estimates describe association and comorbidity, not proof that asthma causes an anxiety disorder or that anxiety causes asthma.
Can Asthma and Panic Happen at the Same Time?
They can, and this is one of the most important reasons not to force every episode into a single category. An asthma flare can produce breathlessness; that breathlessness can trigger panic; panic can increase respiratory distress and attention to breathing; and the combined episode can feel much more severe than either process alone. The fact that calming reduces part of the distress does not prove the airways were normal. Likewise, the fact that a bronchodilator helps airflow does not prove panic played no role.
For someone with established asthma and recurrent panic-like episodes, good care often requires two parallel questions: Is the asthma objectively controlled, and is panic or fear of bodily sensations creating additional distress, avoidance, or overuse of emergency resources? Those questions belong together clinically while retaining separate diagnoses and treatments.
How Clinicians Distinguish Asthma From Panic
History and Symptom Pattern
Clinicians ask about prior asthma diagnosis, age of onset, known triggers, allergies, nighttime or exercise-related symptoms, recurrent cough or wheeze, recent infection, smoking or vaping exposure, medication use, previous emergency visits, and response to an established asthma plan. For panic, they ask about abrupt surges of fear, cognitive symptoms, tingling or numbness, dizziness, prior panic attacks, anticipatory fear, avoidance, and whether attacks are expected or unexpected.
The history also looks for contradictions. A person with “panic” who repeatedly develops wheeze after allergen exposure needs respiratory assessment. A person with “asthma attacks” whose repeated lung-function evaluation is normal and whose episodes consistently include intense fear, tingling, dizziness, and rapid recovery may need assessment for panic or another non-asthma cause. Neither pattern is conclusive in isolation.
Spirometry and Bronchodilator Responsiveness
Asthma diagnosis is strengthened by objective evidence of variable expiratory airflow. GINA identifies bronchodilator responsiveness as a common test: lung function is measured before and after a bronchodilator such as albuterol or salbutamol. NHLBI likewise lists spirometry, peak expiratory flow, bronchodilator responsiveness, and challenge testing among diagnostic tools.
A normal test at one symptom-free moment does not automatically erase an asthma history because asthma varies over time. Depending on the clinical situation, repeat testing, peak-flow monitoring, bronchial challenge testing, allergy evaluation, or other assessments may be used. This is one reason a single home snapshot cannot settle a recurrent panic-versus-asthma question.
Peak Expiratory Flow
Peak expiratory flow measures how quickly a person can blow air out with maximum effort. It can be especially useful for someone with diagnosed asthma who has a personalized baseline and written action-plan zones. A fall from that person's usual peak flow during symptoms can support worsening airflow obstruction. A single number without a reliable baseline, correct technique, and clinical context is less informative.
Peak flow should not be used as a psychological test. A normal-looking result does not prove that the episode is panic, and a low result requires interpretation because effort and technique affect the measurement. Its greatest value is usually as part of an established asthma-management plan.
Pulse Oximetry
A pulse oximeter estimates blood oxygen saturation and pulse rate. It does not measure expiratory airflow and does not diagnose panic or asthma. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns people not to rely only on a pulse-oximeter reading and notes limitations related to circulation, skin pigmentation, skin temperature, tobacco use, fingernail polish, and other factors.
A normal oxygen-saturation reading therefore cannot be translated into “this must be panic.” Asthma can exist without immediate low oxygen, especially outside a severe flare, while a concerning low reading requires medical attention in context. Symptoms, trajectory, known disease, clinical examination, and lung-function assessment remain central.
Other Medical Causes of Breathlessness
Asthma is not the only medical condition that can resemble panic. Acute breathlessness or chest symptoms can also arise from infections, cardiac rhythm problems, pulmonary embolism, pneumothorax, inducible laryngeal obstruction, medication effects, metabolic disturbances, and other causes. The 2024 medical-differential review by Tunnell and colleagues is useful precisely because it treats panic-like physical symptoms as a differential-diagnosis problem rather than assuming a psychiatric cause from symptom resemblance.
This wider differential matters most when the episode is a first event, occurs in someone without a clear prior diagnosis, includes objective signs of illness, follows a new medication or substance exposure, or differs materially from previous episodes. In those situations, the correct next step is evaluation, not increasingly elaborate self-comparison.
Does an Inhaler Help a Panic Attack?
A bronchodilator inhaler treats airway narrowing; it is not a treatment for a panic attack in someone without bronchoconstriction. If breathing difficulty is caused primarily by panic, the inhaler may not address the underlying mechanism. But this fact should never be inverted into advice to withhold prescribed asthma rescue treatment when an asthma attack is possible. People with diagnosed asthma should follow the medication instructions in their personal action plan.
There is another source of confusion: some quick-relief asthma medicines can themselves cause tremor and a rapid heartbeat. NHLBI lists these as possible side effects of inhaled short-acting beta2-agonists. Those sensations can feel similar to panic symptoms and may increase fear in someone who is highly sensitive to bodily changes. The side effect does not mean the medicine caused a psychiatric disorder or that prescribed rescue treatment should be stopped without medical guidance.
What to Do When You Have Asthma and Are Not Sure Whether It Is Panic
If you have diagnosed asthma, the safest starting point is your written asthma action plan. NHLBI guidance describes an action plan as a written set of instructions for recognizing worsening asthma, deciding which medicines to use and when, and knowing when to contact a clinician or go to the emergency department. Follow that individualized plan rather than replacing it with a generic internet checklist.
Use the prescribed reliever exactly as directed for the asthma symptoms or action-plan zone you are experiencing. If you also recognize a familiar panic pattern, you can reduce unnecessary stimulation, sit somewhere safe, and allow breathing to settle without forcing huge breaths. The respiratory safety plan remains primary when asthma is possible.
If symptoms do not improve as your plan predicts, if breathing remains very hard, or if the episode feels meaningfully different from prior panic or asthma episodes, seek medical care. Repeated uncertainty is also worth discussing in routine care: objective asthma monitoring and a careful panic assessment can reduce both under-treatment of asthma and repeated fear-driven ambiguity.
When Breathing Symptoms Need Urgent or Emergency Care
Emergency thresholds should be based on medical severity, not on whether anxiety is present. NHLBI's asthma-attack guidance says to call 911 when asthma medicines are not relieving symptoms or breathing is still very hard. It also advises emergency evaluation when serious asthma symptoms do not resolve soon after at-home medicines. Outside the United States, use the local emergency number.
Seek urgent medical help for severe or rapidly worsening breathing difficulty, a serious asthma attack, collapse or near-collapse, new blue or gray discoloration, severe chest symptoms, marked confusion, or a situation in which you cannot safely determine what is happening. This article cannot establish the cause of an acute episode, and emergency care should not be delayed to test whether calming techniques make it go away.
For a first severe panic-like event, especially one dominated by breathing or chest symptoms, medical evaluation can be appropriate because panic is a diagnosis of pattern and context, not a visual impression. Once a person has a well-established history and an individualized plan from clinicians, they may be able to manage familiar recurrences more confidently.
Common Mistakes in the Panic-vs-Asthma Comparison
Mistake 1: “If I am scared, it is panic.”
Fear is expected during genuine respiratory distress. The emotional response does not identify the cause.
Mistake 2: “If I am wheezing, it cannot be panic.”
Wheezing supports an airway explanation, but panic and asthma can coexist. A person can experience panic during an asthma flare.
Mistake 3: “My oxygen saturation is normal, so it is panic.”
Pulse oximetry estimates oxygenation, not airflow obstruction, and home devices have accuracy limitations. A normal number cannot diagnose panic or rule out asthma by itself.
Mistake 4: “The inhaler made my heart race, so the episode was panic.”
Rapid heartbeat and tremor can occur as side effects of some bronchodilators. That does not retroactively identify the original cause of the breathing symptoms.
Mistake 5: “Panic attacks are harmless, so I can ignore breathing symptoms.”
A correctly identified panic attack is not the same thing as a respiratory emergency. The problem is identification: asthma and other medical conditions can mimic panic, so new or concerning symptoms require appropriate medical assessment.
Mistake 6: “One panic attack means panic disorder.”
It does not. NIMH explicitly distinguishes an isolated panic attack from panic disorder. Recurrent unexpected attacks plus persistent worry, behavioral change, and clinical assessment define the disorder-level question. See Panic Disorder: Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis, and Treatment for the dedicated diagnostic territory.
Panic Attack vs Asthma Attack in Children and Adolescents
The same overlap exists in younger people, while the threshold for caution should be high. Children may have difficulty describing whether they feel chest tightness, air hunger, fear, dizziness, or throat sensations, and caregivers may see only rapid breathing, distress, or withdrawal from activity. Asthma is common in childhood, while panic attacks can also occur in adolescents. A child's acute breathing problem should therefore be assessed through the child's asthma history, prescribed action plan, observable respiratory signs, and medical evaluation when symptoms are severe or unclear.
Caregivers should not teach a child that every episode of breathlessness is “anxiety,” and they should not teach that every anxious sensation means the lungs are failing. The goal is a reliable plan: objective asthma management where relevant, clear emergency thresholds, and developmentally appropriate support for panic or fear when those processes are present.
What the Evidence Supports
Established evidence supports several points. Asthma is characterized by variable respiratory symptoms plus variable expiratory airflow, and objective lung-function testing is central to diagnosis. Panic attacks can produce marked respiratory, cardiovascular, sensory, and cognitive symptoms. The two conditions can coexist. Anxiety is more common among people with asthma than among controls in meta-analytic data. Asthma action plans and prescribed reliever strategies are the appropriate framework for known asthma, and severe symptoms that do not respond require urgent care.
Evidence is more limited when people ask for a single symptom that perfectly separates the conditions. Small comparative studies suggest some respiratory features such as wheeze, cough, and mucus are more characteristic of asthma, but no individual symptom provides a universal diagnostic boundary. Respiratory mechanisms in panic, including hyperventilation and carbon-dioxide changes, are clinically important but do not explain every panic attack.
A plausible clinical interpretation is therefore probabilistic rather than categorical: clusters of symptoms, triggers, history, objective airflow data, and response patterns shift the likelihood toward asthma, panic, both, or another cause. Formal diagnosis remains a clinical process.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I tell a panic attack from an asthma attack at home?
You often cannot do so with certainty from symptoms alone. Known asthma history, wheeze or cough, recognized asthma triggers, reduced peak flow relative to a personal baseline, and response within an established asthma action plan can support asthma. Abrupt intense fear with tingling, dizziness, derealization, and rapidly escalating catastrophic thoughts can support panic. Overlap is substantial, and severe or unfamiliar breathing symptoms should be medically assessed.
Can a panic attack cause wheezing?
Panic commonly causes breathlessness, chest tightness, rapid breathing, dizziness, and tingling. True recurrent wheeze raises the importance of evaluating asthma or another airway condition rather than assuming panic. Panic can also occur during asthma, so wheeze and panic symptoms can appear in the same episode.
Can an asthma attack cause a panic attack?
Yes. Breathlessness can be frightening and can trigger a secondary panic response, especially after previous severe respiratory episodes. The presence of panic does not cancel the asthma process.
Can anxiety or panic make asthma worse?
Emotional stress is a recognized asthma trigger for some people according to NHLBI, and respiratory changes during acute anxiety may interact with asthma. The relationship is variable across individuals and does not mean anxiety is the sole cause of asthma.
Does albuterol help a panic attack?
Albuterol is a bronchodilator used to open narrowed airways. It is not a panic treatment when bronchoconstriction is absent. If you have prescribed albuterol or another reliever for asthma, use it according to your clinician's instructions and asthma action plan rather than trying to diagnose the episode by whether the medicine changes how you feel.
Can an asthma inhaler make me feel panicky?
Some quick-relief beta2-agonists can cause tremor and a rapid heartbeat. Those sensations may feel similar to panic or intensify fear in someone who is sensitive to bodily changes. Discuss recurrent troublesome side effects with the prescriber; do not change prescribed asthma treatment on the basis of this article.
Can a pulse oximeter tell whether it is asthma or panic?
No. A pulse oximeter estimates oxygen saturation and pulse rate. It does not measure airflow obstruction and it does not diagnose panic. Readings also have known accuracy limitations. Use it only as one piece of information within medical guidance, not as a panic-versus-asthma detector.
Can a normal oxygen saturation rule out an asthma attack?
No. Oxygen saturation and expiratory airflow are different measurements. A normal pulse-oximeter value does not establish that the airways are normal and should not be used to reclassify concerning respiratory symptoms as panic.
Should I use my asthma inhaler if I am not sure whether it is panic?
If you have diagnosed asthma, follow your written asthma action plan and the instructions attached to your prescribed reliever. Do not withhold indicated asthma treatment because anxiety is present. If symptoms are not responding as expected or breathing remains very hard, seek urgent or emergency medical care.
Does one panic-like episode mean I have panic disorder?
No. A panic attack is an episode. Panic disorder is a clinical diagnosis involving a recurrent pattern plus ongoing concern or behavior change and assessment of other explanations.
When should I seek emergency help?
Seek emergency care when breathing is very hard, when prescribed asthma rescue medicine is not relieving an attack, when symptoms are rapidly worsening or severe, or when there are other signs of a potentially serious medical event. In the United States call 911; elsewhere use the local emergency number.
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References
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