Understanding Wheezing – Diagnosis & Treatment

Medically Reviewed by Carol DerSarkissian, MD on September 10, 2023
3 min read

To determine the cause of your wheezing, your doctor will ask questions about your symptoms and what triggers them. For example, if you have no history of lung disease and you always wheeze after eating a certain food or at a certain time of year, the doctor may suspect that you have a food or respiratory allergy.

The doctor will listen to your lungs with a stethoscope to hear where the wheezing is and how much wheezing you have.

If this is the first time you've been evaluated, your doctor will probably ask you to perform a breathing test (spirometry) and may also order a chest X-ray.

Other blood tests and procedures may be necessary, depending on what the doctor learns from interviewing and examining you.

If it seems like allergies may be related to your wheezing, there are a variety of other tests your doctor may use to verify allergies, including skin testing or blood tests.

First off, see a doctor to find the cause of your wheezing and then receive treatment for the specific cause.

If wheezing is caused by asthma, your doctor may recommend some or all of the following to reduce inflammation and open the airways:

If you have acute bronchitis, your doctor may recommend some or all of the following:

Generally, any mild wheezing that comes with acute bronchitis disappears when the infection does.

Call 911 if you have a hard time breathing. In emergencies, a medical team may give you any of the following: