Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Dyspnea

Dyspnea - shortness of breath.

Patients suffering from asthma, usually complain of shortness of breath or tightness in the chest when breathing.


Neurophysiological basis of dyspnea is unclear. It is believed that it is based may lie violations mechanisms of both central and peripheral character, controlling the act of breathing. The greatest importance in the formation of dyspnea given changes of the functional state of receptors respiratory muscles, the tracheobronchial tree, pulmonary parenchyma and vessels of the pulmonary circulation.

Increased frequency of respiratory movements occur in humans with a variety of physiological and pathological conditions, but there is shortness of breath due to changes in the sensitivity of perception of breathing, often unexpressed tachypnea. Disease for which there is shortness of breath associated with damage to the respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous system. Shortness of breath may occur due to obstructive or restrictive processes in the lung.

Obstructive apnea is peculiar type of diseases such as bronchitis, asthma, lung eamfizema, foreign body airway restrictive same type of apnea occurs when fibrosis, pneumothorax, extensive pneumonia, atelectasis. Shortness of breath develops and congestive heart failure - also called cardiac dyspnea. Central type of apnea is usually hyperventilation character.

With recognition of the nature of dyspnea address the following characteristics: the degree of dyspnea, the patient's position during dyspnea, cyanosis, severity, the nature of listening to wheezing, shortness of breath with a combination of cough, dyspnea pace of development. In assessing the degree of dyspnea into account the number of respiratory movements in 1 min and the appearance of paroxysmal dyspnea. A heart, and the origin of dyspnea during an attack of asthma patients take the forced sitting position.

Acrocyanosis - a sign of congestive heart failure. Diffuse cyanosis characteristic of thromboembolic pulmonary artery branches and also noted in patients with chronic nonspecific lung diseases. Pale gray cyanosis - a sign of emphysema. Dyspnea crowing character develops in contact with foreign bodies, tumors of the upper respiratory tract.

In obstructive lung disease accompanied by cough, shortness of breath discharge of mucous or muco-purulent sputum. The combination of dyspnea and chest pain typical of pneumothorax, thromboembolic pulmonary artery branches. Shortness of breath, combined with a fall in blood pressure and cardiac arrhythmia is a poor predictor. The sudden increase in shortness of breath characteristic of patients with thromboembolic pulmonary artery branches and pnevomtoraksom.

Analysis of patients clarifies the nature of breathlessness. Listens to a lot of dry rales are characteristic of patients with chronic bronchitis and bronchial asthma. The presence of rales in lowback parts of the chest, cardiac arrhythmias and heart sounds suggest <heart> nature of breathlessness.

Additional studies of patients with asthma, including x-rays of the chest, ECG, blood gas study, clarify the nature of breathlessness.

Rentgenomorfologicheskaya picture of the chest reveals the characteristic diagnostic signs of pneumonia, pleurisy, pulmonary edema, hydrothorax, valvular heart disease. Provides important information electrocardiography, to detect signs of pulmonary heart disease, myocardial infarction, arrhythmia.

In the study of stress in the arterial blood of 02 and C02 - set the severity of hypoxemia and hypercapnia.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing this extremely informative article on breathlessness due to cough. I recently read about breathlessness on website called breathefree.com. I found it extremely helpful.

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