The Allergist

"...these are chronic conditions that are not going to magically go away when a patient turns 18 or 21." — Dr. William Anderson
Adolescence and early adulthood tend to be a rough stretch for patients with allergic disease. Asthma that used to be well controlled can start to drift. Teenagers take more chances with foods they are meant to avoid, and they show up for fewer of their appointments. Meanwhile the daily management is sliding off the parent and onto a patient who often is not ready to carry it, from refills to the action plan to knowing what to do in an emergency.
On this episode, Dr. Mariam Hanna welcomes back Dr. William Anderson, a pediatric allergist and director of the transition program at Children's Hospital Colorado. Their conversation is about why the shift from pediatric to adult care should begin years before a patient turns 18, how a clinic can actually build a young person's independence, and why he treats transition as a core piece of managing the disease itself.
Key Points
Transition is something you plan for over years, not something that happens on a birthday.
Teenagers and young adults are more likely to lose disease control, miss follow-up, and land in the emergency department.
Starting at 12 to 14 leaves runway to build skills before adult care becomes urgent.
Parents stay in the picture, but the patient has to start talking in appointments and handling refills.
A tool like TRAQ helps, but confirm the answers with the patient.
The work does not have to fall on the physician alone. Nurses, staff, and care coordinators can carry a lot of it.
The real obstacle is usually cultural. Handing over control feels like a loss.
The goal is not to push patients out early. It is to keep a young person from vanishing into the gap between pediatric and adult care. Someone who knows their own medications and can handle a refill or a scare without a parent is far safer than someone who just ages out and hopes.

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Visit the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

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Find Dr. Hanna on X, previously Twitter, @PedsAllergyDoc or CSACI @CSACI_ca

The Allergist is produced for CSACI by PodCraft Productions

“If you are willing to use it and use it quickly, that's what I want you to have.”
— Dr. Jay Lieberman
Epinephrine is everywhere in allergy practice. Prescribed, refilled, demonstrated, repeated. And still, it carries a strange kind of fear. Patients hesitate. Clinicians sometimes hesitate too. Is it dangerous? Is it a last resort? How bad does the reaction have to be before it counts?
On this episode, Dr. Mariam Hanna is joined by Dr. Jay Lieberman, professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee and interim division chief of allergy and immunology at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. He talks through what epinephrine does in the body, where the evidence is still messier than many assume, and how new needle-free options may change whether patients actually use it when it matters.
Key Points
Epinephrine remains first-line because it targets the major physiologic problems in anaphylaxis.
Fear of epinephrine still gets in the way of early use.
Anaphylaxis definitions are useful, but hard to translate for patients.
Nasal and sublingual routes may reduce the barrier of the needle.
The best device is still the one the patient will actually use.
Needle-free epinephrine won't answer every question in anaphylaxis care. But it may change the most practical one: not whether patients know they should treat, but whether they actually will.
Have an idea for the show or a comment, send us a text!
Visit the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Find an allergist using our helpful tool

Find Dr. Hanna on X, previously Twitter, @PedsAllergyDoc or CSACI @CSACI_ca

The Allergist is produced for CSACI by PodCraft Productions

“You can have a patient that has normal immunoglobulins and abnormal responses to protein antigens as well. Historically, I’ve seen these patients. They do happen. They are out there.” — Dr. Benjamin Prince
Specific antibody deficiency (SAD) has never been a clean diagnosis. Some patients carry normal immunoglobulins and still land in clinic with recurrent infections and poor vaccine responses. The newer pneumococcal vaccines have scrambled the old testing pathways. This episode covers which parts of the workup still hold up, and where a titre should actually change what you do next.
Dr. Mariam Hanna is joined by Dr. Benjamin Prince, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Division Chief of Research in Allergy and Immunology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He walks through the shifting definition of SAD, what pneumococcal titres can and can't tell you, and how to read testing in the Prevnar 20 era.
Key Points
Clinical history as the gatekeeper for who gets worked up
What Prevnar 20 did to polysaccharide response testing
Reading the patient ahead of the titre
Recommendation 4.7 and impaired protein-antigen responses
Pneumococcal titre thresholds: useful, imperfect, lab-dependent
The management range, from watchful waiting through immunoglobulin replacement
A useful listen for any clinician who has stared at a borderline pneumococcal panel and wondered whether to keep pulling the thread. The lab pathway exists, but the history is still what tells you whether the result will mean anything.

Have an idea for the show or a comment, send us a text!
Visit the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Find an allergist using our helpful tool

Find Dr. Hanna on X, previously Twitter, @PedsAllergyDoc or CSACI @CSACI_ca

The Allergist is produced for CSACI by PodCraft Productions

“If the asthma is under good control but they are still having these episodes, then I do think that maybe they have a PVFMD component to their breathing issue.” Dr. R. Jun Lin
Patients come into clinic short of breath. It hits during exercise, it looks dramatic, and they may even describe noisy breathing or the feeling that they “can’t get air in.” So we do what clinicians do: we think asthma. We try inhalers. But sometimes, no matter how many puffers are thrown at the problem, nothing changes.
That’s when it may be time to look higher, to the larynx.
On this episode of The Allergist, Dr. Mariam Hanna is joined by Dr. R. Jun Lin, a fellowship-trained laryngologist and chief of the Division of Laryngology at the University of Toronto, for a practical discussion of vocal cord dysfunction, inducible laryngeal obstruction, and paradoxical vocal fold motion disorder. Dr. Lin walks through how these patients present, how to distinguish laryngeal obstruction from asthma, when both may be present, and why respiratory retraining therapy is often the cornerstone of care.
Key Points
VCD, ILO, EILO, and PVFMD describe the same basic problem through different specialty lenses.
The key clue: trouble breathing in, not out.
In teens, it often shows up during warm-up or early competition.
In adults, common triggers include perfume, bleach, gasoline, cooking fumes, cold air, humidity, speaking, or laughing.
Asthma and PVFMD can coexist. If asthma is controlled but symptoms persist, think larynx.
Laryngoscopy is often normal in PVFMD, but helps rule out structural causes.
Respiratory retraining therapy is the cornerstone of treatment.
Pursed-lip breathing can reduce the severity and duration of episodes, but patients need to practise it before symptoms peak.
Food triggers, urticaria, tongue swelling, or rash point away from PVFMD.
Botox is a last resort, not first-line treatment.
For clinicians, this episode is a reminder that not every dramatic breathing episode starts in the lower airway. When the history points to trouble getting air in, especially with poor response to inhalers, PVFMD deserves a place on the differential.

Have an idea for the show or a comment, send us a text!
Visit the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Find an allergist using our helpful tool

Find Dr. Hanna on X, previously Twitter, @PedsAllergyDoc or CSACI @CSACI_ca

The Allergist is produced for CSACI by PodCraft Productions

“AI might feel like magic at times, but mostly it's just powerful technology, and with any technology, it's a tool.” —Merlijn van Breugel
AI is no longer a future-tense possibility for allergists. It is already shaping diagnosis, prediction, documentation, patient communication, and the way clinicians think through complex decisions. But if AI can process more than we can, what still belongs to the clinician?
On this episode of The Allergist, Dr. Mariam Hanna is joined by Merlijn van Breugel, a data scientist and philosopher whose work focuses on AI in allergy and immunology. Together, they get into where AI may be most useful now and in the near future, including phenotyping asthma and eczema, supporting diagnosis in young children, combining genetic, environmental, wearable, and clinical data, and reducing the administrative work that pulls clinicians away from patient care. But the episode does not dodge the hard stuff: hallucinations, bias, validation, liability, overtrust, and the very human problem of changing behaviour in real clinics.
Key Points
Allergy and immunology are not early adopters of AI, partly because the field relies on complex, heterogeneous data.
AI is most promising when it helps reveal patterns clinicians struggle to synthesize on their own, such as asthma or eczema subtypes.
Large language models can hallucinate, so clinicians need to stay critical even when an answer sounds polished and convincing.
Decision-support tools should augment clinical judgment, not replace it.
Bias in training data can create real harm if AI tools work better for some patient populations than others.
The best use cases are significant, underserved problems where AI can do something that older tools could not.
AI literacy will become a core skill for clinicians who want to use these tools safely and effectively.
For allergists, the message is not to fear the machine or blindly follow it. AI may help identify patterns, reduce administrative work, and open new research possibilities, but the clinician still brings the judgment, context, accountability, and critical eye. The future is not AI instead of allergists. It is allergists who understand how to use AI well.
Have an idea for the show or a comment, send us a text!
Visit the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Find an allergist using our helpful tool

Find Dr. Hanna on X, previously Twitter, @PedsAllergyDoc or CSACI @CSACI_ca

The Allergist is produced for CSACI by PodCraft Productions