Our Services

Our board certified allergist, nurse practitioners and licensed nurses are specially trained in the treatment of allergic conditions. During your initial consultation with Dr. Lazar, a thorough and focused history and physical is performed. If your history and exam are positive for allergy, asthma or any allergic skin condition, the doctor may suggest further skin testing, blood work or other tests to support your diagnosis. These studies will help guide your individualized treatment plan. Allergy skin testing can often be completed on your first visit to our office. In addition, Dr. Lazar diagnoses and treats many patients with immune system problems or deficiencies. When a patient’s exam and history include chronic sinus or lung infections it may be a sign that their immune system is not functioning correctly. Dr. Lazar would then order blood work to determine if there is a immune system problem.

We provide the following allergy tests

• Allergy skin testing can be done for environmental allergies including trees, grasses, weeds, molds, mites, cats, dogs, and foods.
• Skin patch testing can be done to diagnose allergies to metal, fragrance, and many other common chemical allergens found in a variety of day to day items. This testing is done when someone has a rash that is itchy or scaly or possibly hive-like in nature and it is not clear what the cause of the rash is. The “patches” are left on for three days and then read back at our office.
• Testing for medication allergies
• Testing for stinging insect allergies such as bees and wasps
• Testing for sinusitis
• Testing for immunodeficiency

** If you think you will be having an allergy test at the time of your visit, you need to stop taking any antihistamine (i.e. Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra or others) at least 5 days before your visit. You can however, take benedryl up to two days before. It is O.K. to take decongestants such as sudafed and it is O.K. to continue your asthma medications. If you are unsure if any of your medication will cause a problem, just call our office at (231)995-3657.

Asthma is a chronic disease that affects your ability to breathe easily. In many cases of asthma, allergies can trigger an “attack”. When you have an attack, your airways or tubes that you breathe through, get narrower and your lungs get less air. This can cause wheezing (a whistling noise when breathing), coughing, chest tightness and trouble breathing, especially early in the morning or at night. If you have asthma, the inside walls of your airways become sore and swollen. That makes your airways very sensitive, and they may react strongly to things that you are allergic to or with exercise. You may have asthma even if you don’t wheeze but have frequent cough or difficulty breathing with exercise or when breathing in things like perfume.

At Grand Traverse Allergy we can test you for allergies that may be the cause or trigger for your attacks. We can do a breathing test to help in determining if you have asthma and this will also help to guide your treatment plan.

Treatment most likely will include inhaled medications and possibly medications to help control your allergies, which will also help to minimize your asthma symptoms. If you have a frequent cough or have trouble breathing with increased activity, you may have asthma and testing is easy and pain-free.

Our office also offers a new medication that can help patients that have allergy driven asthma that has not responded to normal asthma medications. This medication is called Xolair and is given every 2-4 weeks by injection at our office and at our other convenient locations. In just 3-6 months after beginning Xolair, we have seen patients that could not get their asthma under control make great improvements. In many cases Xolair patients have been able to decrease the amount of daily medications and emergency medication that they had to use before they began Xolair. This is better for the patient and safer too!

Our board certified allergist/immunologist is specially trained in evaluating all aspects of the immune system. Individuals experiencing recurrent ear infections, sinus infections, bronchitis or pneumonia may have an underlying deficiency within their immune system. By undergoing a complete immunologic evaluation, a treatment plan can be instituted that will help minimize infections and can help their immune system to function more effectively.