If Johnny can't breathe, it's time for Johnny, his parents and his doctor to get educated.

That's because childhood asthma--once regarded as a problem that could be ignored because most youngsters would "grow out of it"--now is viewed as a chronic problem that can and should be controlled with regular medication.

The change in view occurred within the last 15 years and has had profound effects on patients and their families. Just ask Susan Cerini, a La Canada Flintridge mother who watched her son, Nick, deteriorate from mild wheezing at age 1 1/2 to a frightening period of severe asthma episodes when he was 8.

"We did not get one good night's sleep with him for, gosh, probably six or eight months. He was up every night with these terrible asthma attacks. This kid just could not breathe," Cerini says. "I'm not a real nervous person, but I came so close to calling the paramedics one night because we just couldn't get it under control."

That was when she decided that no matter what doctors had told her, there had to be a better way to deal with Nick's asthma.

Nick's was a classic case of undertreatment, said Dr. Warren Richards, the new physician Cerini consulted a year ago. Until he saw Richards at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, Nick's treatment consisted primarily of allergy shots and the traditional preventive drug, theophylline, which can ease asthma but is losing favor as the asthma drug of first choice. In Nick's case, it wasn't working well enough.

Widespread Approach

Richards, instead, adopted an approach that has become widespread among asthma specialists familiar with the latest research on the disease. Unfortunately, the specialists say, many pediatricians and family practitioners, as well as some allergists, are unfamiliar with these methods.

In an attempt to remedy this, a panel of doctors convened by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute met in Washington last week to begin developing asthma treatment recommendations for use in educating physicians nationwide. They hope the guidelines will help lower asthma hospitalizations as well as deaths, which totaled 122 children and 3,833 adults in the United States in 1986.

The recommendations will not be issued before next summer, but the panel's chairman indicated they will follow a course similar to that adopted by Richards in treating Nick: