Dr. Richard Sveum

Photography by John Wagner and Steve Henke

Richard Sveum, MD

Allergy and Immunology

Richard Sveum

Park Nicollet Clinic
Subspecialty: Pediatric asthma
Other Work: Teaches with Top Doctor Malcolm Blumenthal at the University of Minnesota; Camp SuperKids medical director
Medical School: University of Minnesota
Fellowship: National Institute of Health
Family: Married to Top Doctor, geriatrician Jennifer Olson, four children
Home: Minnetonka
Hobbies: Rare book collector, president of the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collection, avid swimmer

How are allergy, immunology, and asthma connected?
For a majority, asthma is an allergic disease. Allergy antibodies fight infection, and immunology patients are deficient in them. Ours is one of the few specialties that isn’t organ specific, but mechanism specific.

Why do you focus on pediatric asthma?
To me, the most important thing is asthma diagnosis and management and treating it as a chronic disease. What gives me passion is all the kids who have it. The kids didn’t ask for it, and they suffer greatly.

What triggers asthma?
Allergies, viral infections, exercise, emotions, and weather or poor environmental conditions. Half of the people are OK unless they hit one of their triggers and others have persistent asthma.

What causes allergies?
The big debate is, Why is the prevalence, incidence, and severity of these conditions increasing? Right now everybody is pointing to the hygiene hypothesis: Now that we live in clean environments, our immune system attacks things that would otherwise be benign.

What are some new treatment options?
Most have been allergy shots. But there are lots of different ways to manage things. The standard treatment is an antihistamine, but nasal steroid sprays have dramatically changed things. With them, almost everybody can get good control of their allergies.

What is Camp SuperKids?
It’s a [summer] asthma camp for about 150 kids sponsored by the Lung Association. At Camp Iduhapi, nurses and doctors make sure kids get their medication and a psychologist helps the kids. It gives kids a camp experience with teaching and tools. It really gives you a respect for them.