Children's Health

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Other ways to help remove mucus from the lungs involve certain types of movements, coughing, or exercises known as airway clearance techniques. These include:

• Postural drainage and chest percussion, to help your child cough up mucus from the lungs. For specific instructions, see:

  Cystic Fibrosis: Helping Your Child Cough Up Mucus.

• Deep breathing exercises, to help your child breathe out completely and strengthen the muscles used for breathing.
• Directed cough to help clear mucus by breathing and coughing in specific ways.
• Exercise. Aerobic exercise can improve how well the lungs work. Ask your doctor about what kinds of exercise your child should do.
• Alternate methods of airway clearance, such as using a positive expiratory pressure (PEP) device, high-frequency chest compression vest, or Flutter valve. These methods use mechanical equipment to help clear mucus from the lungs.

Digestive therapy. This therapy works to replace certain digestive enzymes, to make sure the body absorbs all the vitamins and minerals it needs, and to prevent or treat intestinal blockages. Digestive therapy involves:

• Digestive enzyme replacement therapy (such as with Creon or Pancreaze), to help the intestines absorb nutrients from food.
• Nutritional therapy to help replace lost nutrients. This may include taking vitamins; eating high-calorie, high-fat foods; drinking nutritional drinks; getting fed through a tube in the stomach; and, in some cases, receiving intravenous nutrient supplementation.
• Preventing intestinal blockages with stool softeners (to avoid constipation) and enemas.

Antibiotics. These medicines, which kill bacteria that cause infections, are often used to treat cystic fibrosis. Some antibiotics may be prescribed to help prevent infections. Others may be prescribed to help fight infections.

Ongoing treatment

Most ongoing treatment for cystic fibrosis focuses on controlling and reducing problems or complications in the respiratory and digestive systems .

Your child is likely to continue with respiratory therapy, digestive therapy, and antibiotics.

People with severe lung disease may need to use oxygen at home. Regular visits with the team of health professionals involved in your child's care are also important.

Oxygen Therapy: Using Oxygen at Home

Doctors may do certain tests to help find out what kinds of problems your child is having. These tests may include:

• A throat culture or sputum culture, to identify what kind of bacteria are present. This test helps your doctor prescribe the best type of antibiotic.
• Lung function tests, to see how healthy the lungs are.
• A stool analysis, to see how well the digestive system is working.
• Blood sugar (glucose) tests, to check for diabetes.

As children with cystic fibrosis get older, it is important for them to learn how to help care for themselves. Even though it can be hard to follow a treatment plan every day, there are many benefits of home treatments. Skipping a treatment may not make a person feel worse right away, but his or her chances of having more serious problems later increase.

Treatment if the condition gets worse