Nasal Allergy (Allergic Rhinitis)

Here are allergic issues of the Nose

Hello, I am Dr. Manish Prakash, senior ENT consultant at Mayom Hospital, Gurgaon. Today we are going to talk about allergic issues of the nose.

More commonly nasal allergies are referred to as Allergic Rhinitis. These allergies can either be seasonal or perennial allergies. Seasonal allergies majorly manifest in terms of seasonal changes whereas perennial allergies would be present throughout the year and they would tend to bother patients all through the year. These allergies are caused by allergens, most of which are aero allergens, sometimes they can be food allergens as well. These aero allergens are present in our environment commonly like pollens, house dust, mites and can lead to a lot of allergic reactions in the nose. A typical allergic reaction manifests itself whenever the body comes in contact with an allergen. There are a lot of problems in the nose in terms of itching and watery discharge from the nose. The eyes sometimes tend to become red and itch. These manifest in a lot of sneezing and sometimes it may also be associated with some wheezing and difficulty in breathing also. This typical allergic reaction may last for few minutes and may go on for few hours as well. It can incapacitate the patient and lead to a lot of problems in the workplace.

Now we are going to discuss how we handle these allergic problems. The easiest and best way to handle these is to avoid the Allergens. So we try to identify based on the history, the experience of the patient and some clinical testing to find out what is the allergen which is causing the problem to the patient. So typically we start with some IGE profiling which is a blood test which can tell us about the allergy status of the patient and that will give us an idea of how much is the allergy level within the patient’s body. Also nowadays we do some Allergy Profiling Test. These tests can tell us as to we are having a specific allergy to which particular allergen and we can do some blood tests which can guide us towards the further treatment of the patient. Also, we have some Skin Allergy Testing which is what we call as Skin Prick Allergy Testing. This test can help us to differentiate between the various types of allergies.

These allergies may sometimes be used as a prick test over the body either typically over the forearm or shoulder and if there is any swelling in the place of the pricking it confirms that there is an allergic reaction of the body towards this particular thing. Once, we are diagnosed of what we are allergic to, we have to start avoiding that particular thing but sometimes we come across things which are very common in our environment and we cannot avoid them like dust mites, pollens to which we can get exposed to whenever we go out. So we have to think about allergy suppression. When we talk about allergy suppression, it would mean that we can either use some anti histaminic which can help us to suppress the allergic symptoms which are present within the body. Typically we can use over the counter available medication like Cetrazin which can help us to decrease the severity of such kind of symptoms.

Patients who have very high allergy levels and continuous symptoms are often advised to use some nasal sprays. These are typically INCS nasal sprays which are intranasal cortical steroid sprays. They help us to decrease the inflammation inside the nose and also decrease the allergic manifestations which lead to improvement in the patient’s overall well-being. Many of these anti allergic medications may need a long term usage and the latest medications which are available are very good and very safe and they can be used for a long period of time. Nowadays we also have newer modalities in terms of immunotherapy in which we can make some vaccines for the allergens which we have diagnosed to these allergy testing and we can serially expose the patient over a period of time and that can help us to decrease the sensitivity to these allergies and over a period of time it will lead to decreased manifestations of allergies and decreased dependence on anti allergic medications.

If you have any such kind of problems in terms of nasal allergy or any other ENT problem you can contact me through Lybrate.com or visit my clinic at Mayom Hospital, South City-1, Gurgaon. Thank you.