A Breath Taking Misdiagnosis

From super-fit to struggling for breath, Ian Wrightson became one of the multitudes of athletes wrongly diagnosed with asthma

- Jamie Ewbank

Any seasoned cyclist would be more than a little ashamed — and concerned — to find themselves out of breath after climbing two flights of stairs. For second-cat racer Ian Wrightson, 34, it was professionally embarrassing too. As the lead therapist of Farnham-based clinic Seventy9 Sports Therapy, his being unable to walk for more than 200 metres without resting was unlikely to inspire confidence among clients.

More worrying still, Wrightson was already receiving treatment. His GP had prescribed prednisolone and a nebuliser to treat what had been diagnosed as an asthma flare-up. Wrightson was following an escalating regimen of treatments in an attempt to control his symptoms. Little did he know, he was treating the wrong illness.

Wrightson lives in Aldershot, Hampshire, and was away from home on holiday in southern France in 2016 when the symptoms started: first as a cough, then also as sleep apnoea (pauses in breathing) at night. Both symptoms worsened during the holiday, and thereafter began to affect his work.

“On return from skiing, I was prescribed a seven-day dose of the corticosteroid prednisolone. As that didn’t work, I was sent to A&E by the GP to be treated on a nebuliser,” he says.