This is an older thread but I'd like to refresh the topic. My cadet (a military brat; this matters in a minute) attending his flight physical last August. Come to find out unlike the other cadets around him, because he was a brat the flight medicine staff had access to all of his lifelong medical record to scrutinize. Sure enough, there was and incident in his medical record, age 10, he had a lingering cold/cough and his parents were documented "asking" to have evaluated for asthma. The doc prescribes a "just in case" prescription for an inhaler and a referral to a pulmonologist/allergist. The referral comes back negative, cold clears up after 30 days, and the next 12 years of his medical record has no diagnosis of asthma.
But the inhaler is still in his record; as prescription which was never used/refilled and expired after 12 months.
Now fast forward to his per-commissioning flight physical.
Much like the original poster in this thread, my cadet had attended an all summer long training session. By the last month of his training, most of his class all had the same cold/cough crud. Which he was still recovering from at his physical.
Two things form the perfect storm at the physical; his shows up sick, with an upper respiratory infection, and they find an inhaler prescription with the question of asthma in his pediatric record.
The staff decides to have him take a pulmonary function test. I wish he had refused to take the test, because he was sick, but the staff insisted, his cold would not effect the PFT outcome (wrong). He took the PFT, failed it, then finally the lead flight doc stepped in, diagnosed him with a viral upper respiratory infection, discusses his childhood inhaler prescription (which he honestly never remembered or was aware of), sends him home to recover and reaccomplish a PFT to clear up the record. Great...right? But now.
He takes the PFT arranged by his doctor, passes the PFT perfectly. In addition, he provided a voluminous review of his medical record highlighting the negative test results from his PFT/Pulm consult at age 10 at the subsequent 12 years of pediatric care with no mention of any kind of asthma diagnosis.
Back to his healthy PFT. He passes it. Instead of this closing the subject. The flight medicine staff demand a methacholine challenge test MCT. Great. He takes the MCT and passes with flying colors.
The flight medicine people stop making demands for more tests (cost insurance $3000 and $1000 out of pocket) and tell him that have sent his package off to AETC (USAF) HQ for "processing and disposition".