Children with breathing and airway abnormalities often have signs of gradual or sudden onset. Children with difficulty breathing may have had signs before, but parents are often subjective. Children with a history of diseases such as prolonged cough, upper respiratory infections, foreign bodies in the airways, congenital or acquired difficulty breathing, HIV infection, or a family history of asthma often have breathing and airway abnormalities.

To diagnose ventilation disorders, doctors will perform lung function tests on patients, which is the gold standard for diagnosing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).