Oh, what a shocking revelation we have here! After an exhaustive game of medical peekaboo with the Pediatric Health Information System database, researchers have unearthed the groundbreaking fact that, wait for it… babies and toddlers get diagnosed with different things as they grow older. Who would’ve thought, right?

So, in this thrilling episode of “What’s Up With Wheezing?”, we’ve got a whopping 554,158 medical encounters from 42 hospitals, where doctors played the guessing game of “Is it bronchiolitis or is it asthma?” Spoiler alert: for those tiny humans under 3 months, it’s almost always bronchiolitis. But as they hit the ripe old age of 23 months, asthma diagnoses start to creep in, accounting for a dramatic 44% of encounters.

But wait, there’s more! The plot thickens with a twist of inconsistency—hospitals can’t seem to agree on a diagnosis. It’s like they’re all reading from different scripts. And for those kiddos between 12 to 23 months, the likelihood of being tagged with a non-bronchiolitis label increases with each passing month. Factors like being a boy, non-Hispanic Black, having a social calendar full of previous medical encounters, and a history of hitting the albuterol all contribute to the odds.

And because we can’t have a medical mystery without a cliffhanger, the study ends with a call for better definitions of bronchiolitis and asthma. Because, you know, it would be so helpful to actually know what we’re treating. Until then, we’ll just keep on guessing and hope for the best for our wheezy little protagonists.