Notes on Asthma article

Hi Folks,

In response to a request by Mr.Bip, I've given the asthma article a "layperson review." Some of the things I stumbled over and a few ideas for addressing them are listed below. I'm also willing to help implement them if there's something you want to address but aren't sure how.

I've never really done this sort of review before, but I hope you'll take these comments as they're meant -- as constructive criticism and suggestions -- rather than as any sort of complaining or insistence that anything be changed. I think you've put together a great article -- and I certainly learned a great deal reading it.

So here goes....

It's not immediately clear from the beginning (unless, presumably, you have a medical background) that we're discussing a human medical condition. BTW, do animals other than humans ever have athsma?

General stylistic notes

In general, I think the descriptions of athsma symptoms and causes would be easier for the layperson to understand if they explicitly compared the "normal" function with the "athsmatic" function of the organs and systems in question.

I think the article reads a bit like it's addressed to a first-year med student, rather than to an average high school graduate. Say you had just diagnosed a kid with asthma and were explaining the diagnosis to his distraught mother (who's no rocket scientist but not stupid either -- say she works as a receptionist in the office down the street). How would you explain it? That might be the appropriate sort of language to use.

Technical style, jargon, etc

Opening of article is almost overwhelmingly technical. "Chronic inflammatory condition"? responsiveness of airways to stimuli? I imagine an introductory medical textbook might sound a bit like this.
- Why not at least open the article with a simple layman's explanation that asthma is a chronic condition that can cause difficulty breathing? Then the jargon has a context that might make it easier to puzzle out.

Similarly, with terms like "Bronchial hyperresponsiveness", with no links to articles with further detail, and no explanation, the layperson is going to be easily lost.
- The jargon is presumably important for the medical reader, but you could either use non-medical terms to describe the symptoms, with the medical terms added in parentheses, or vice-versa.
- A bit of linking to other articles for the sake of vocabulary might help a bit (i.e. for words like "symptom", which is a common word but nonetheless outside of a lot of people's vocabulary), but isn't really a substitute for explaining terms that really are specific to the profession.
- One symptom of the jargon problem that I noticed is a tendency to use a whole lot of nouns and noun phrases (e.g. "leads to narrowing of the airways" instead of "causes the airways to become narrower").

The diagnosis section is a bit better in terms of jargon, but could use proofreading.

The Mechanisms section is the worst jargon offender. I know that it is in fact a technical discussion, but the first paragraph could be made accessible, and the others perhaps just a bit more comprehensible.

The second and third paragraphs of "Pathogenesis" are IMHO the most accessible paragraphs in the article, and might be a good stylistic reference point. FWIW, this section seems to be essentially redundant with Epidemiology, and the chart showing the prevalence of Asthma is better explained by the information given in Pathogenesis than in Epidemiology.

Miscellaneous

What on earth is the box on the right side titled "Asthma", with a couple of bizarre codes in it?

I think it's great that there's a closeup photo of an inhaler. Do you think it might be more recognizable in profile?