Allergic disease has grown steadily more common in recent years, to the point where about one person in five now has an allergy of some kind.
It is not only the number of allergic patients that has risen, but the severity of what they suffer. We see, more and more often and at younger and younger ages, severe forms of asthma and anaphylactic reactions, but also skin conditions with an allergic component, reactions to food or to medicines with severe symptoms and course, and reactions to insect stings that are not merely local but frequently anaphylactic.
Preventing and properly treating these conditions depends above all on recognising the signs of allergic disease, which are often mistaken for the signs of something else or simply ignored. Nasal or conjunctival symptoms - repeated sneezing, a running nose, a blocked nose, an itching nose or eyes, watering eyes, laboured or wheezing breath, a persistent cough, frequent respiratory infections in children, skin eruptions of various kinds with or without itching and swelling of the face or the extremities, and the association of any of these with particular foods, medicines or contact with substances at home or at work - are all reasons to see an allergist.
Skin testing for environmental allergens, for food allergens or for those the skin comes into contact with, respiratory tests, drug provocation tests, tailored exclusion diets and the specific allergological and immunological analyses all help identify what brought the condition on, point to the right preventive measures, guide the prescription of medication and, where called for, the specific allergy vaccines.
• Asthma
• Allergic rhinitis [see more]
• Allergic conjunctivitis
• Recurrent respiratory infections in children
• Food allergy
• Food intolerance
• Drug allergy
• Allergy to insect stings
• Atopic dermatitis in children and adults
• Contact dermatitis
• Urticaria and angioedema
• Prurigo
• Sun allergies
• Cold allergy
• Mastocytosis
• Allergy vaccines
• Hypereosinophilic syndromes
• Raised IgE
• Anaphylaxis
Choose the procedure you are interested in from the list in the right-hand column.
