Asthma can be hard to diagnose. Your child’s doctor will consider the symptoms and their frequency and your child’s medical history. Your child might need tests to rule out other conditions and to identify the most likely cause of the symptoms.

A number of childhood conditions can have symptoms similar to those caused by asthma. To complicate the issue further, these conditions also commonly occur with asthma. So your child’s doctor will have to determine whether your child’s symptoms are caused by asthma, a condition other than asthma, or both asthma and another condition.