Inflammation of the lungs, or rather, inflammation of the lung tissue, is called pneumonia in the medical environment. Most often, the disease is infectious and affects all structures of the respiratory organ. If the signs of pneumonia are ignored for a long time, then this can lead to complications; cases of the lethal outcome of this pathology are known.
General information about the disease
The human respiratory system, including the lungs, is susceptible to attack by various infections and viruses. If the immune system is weakened, then the inflammation is perfectly engraftment in the body, leading to the appearance of bronchitis, and going down to the diagnosis of pneumonia.
Under this name in medicine means a number of diseases. Each of them has its own character of action and the risks of complications. To determine the exact type of pathology will allow a professional examination and passing tests.
Signs of pneumonia most often appear in young children and in people of advanced age, when the immune system is most vulnerable. Moreover, this type of pathology is widespread and, judging by the statistical data, is diagnosed in 15 cases out of 1000.
Despite the large selection of modern antibiotics that are constantly expanding the spectrum of their action, it is not possible to exclude the possibility of developing pneumonia.
Causes
The inflammatory process in the lung tissue can be both infectious and non-infectious in nature. In medicine, a number of bacteria and viruses are isolated that can cause pneumonia:
- Pneumococci.
- Streptococcus
- Mycoplasma.
- Influenza viruses, herpes.
- Adenoviruses.
- Mushrooms (e.g. Candida).
If the disease has a non-infectious nature, then other factors most often provoke it:
- Toxic substances that a person has inhaled.
- Chest injury.
- A burn of the airways.
- Treatment with radiation therapy.
Often, the disease can develop against the background of another dangerous pathology. In this case, the cause of pneumonia can be measles, anthrax, scarlet fever.
Risk factors
Long-term studies of the disease made it possible to identify a number of factors that have a direct impact on the human body and can catalyze the development of pneumonia.
These include:
- The standard of living is below the average.
- Permanent smoking.
- Unsuitable working conditions, inhalation of toxic substances and dust.
- Frequent contact with animals (can serve as carriers).
- Contact with a sick person.
- Heredity, genetic predisposition of the respiratory system.
If there is a suspicion of lung damage, it is necessary to consult a doctor in a timely manner to prevent the development of pneumonia complications.
How is a disease classified?
In accordance with the existing classification, pneumonia is divided by type, form, and also stages.
The etiology of the disease divides pneumonia into the following types:
- Fungal.
- Viral
- Bacterial.
- Mixed.
- Mycoplasmal.
The disease is divided according to the nature and form of the course:
- Acute (croupous).
- Atypical.
- Protracted sharp.
To select the desired course of treatment, it is important to determine the lesion. The pulmonary system can be affected either partially or completely. It is customary to distinguish the following types of pneumonia:
- Focal, implies the development of the disease in a separate part of the lung tissue.
- Segmental, the disease develops in several parts of the lung tissue.
- Fractional, the entire pulmonary lobe is affected.
- Drain, characterized by the union of several foci of the disease.
- Total or bilateral pneumonia, affects the entire lungs (the most severe type of pathology).
There are mild, moderate and severe degrees of inflammation in pneumonia.
Symptoms of the disease
Depending on the type of pneumonia, the ailment may be accompanied by various symptoms. In some cases, it can be taken as a banal catarrhal disease and not show due attention to the inflammatory process.
How to determine pneumonia? First you need to know the general symptoms of this disease and not miss their appearance:
- Dyspnea of varying severity, which directly depends on the severity of the inflammatory process.
- In elderly people or in the presence of cardiovascular pathologies, cyanosis appears in the abdomen and nasolabial part of the face.
- Cough with pneumonia first appears as dry. After a few days, it turns into wet, with the release of purulent sputum.
- Elevated body temperature indicates an inflammatory process.
- Constant feeling of tiredness, weakness, overwork.
- Typical for pneumonia are muscle pain, frequent headaches.
The listed symptoms may indicate other diseases, but regardless of this, they require a visit to a doctor and a thorough diagnosis.
Signs of focal pneumonia
This type of disease at the initial stage develops imperceptibly. The temperature is kept at 38 degrees, there is increased sweating and difficulty in breathing. With the development of the inflammatory process, the patient feels pain when breathing, the temperature begins to rise. If you leave the disease without treatment, then there are pronounced wheezing in the respiratory process, the condition is rapidly deteriorating.
Bilateral pneumonia and its symptoms
It is considered the most dangerous type of disease. According to statistics, this form of pneumonia takes up to 1.5 million lives a year.
The most dangerous is that the disease can go unnoticed, pneumonia without symptoms does not allow you to establish a diagnosis on time and proceed to treatment. The absence of obvious signs is fraught with the development of serious complications, the risk of death is increased.
The above looks awesome, but don't panic. The imperceptible course of the disease does not always occur, and total pneumonia in most cases is accompanied by common characteristic symptoms. Moreover, with a strong inflammatory process, their intensity increases significantly.
Cough with pneumonia with bilateral lung damage quickly turns into wet, accompanied by pain and profuse sputum discharge.
Diagnosis of an inflammatory disease
With intense symptoms, it is not difficult to determine the disease, even at home. This helps to independently understand that a serious medical examination is required.
If the body does not show signs of the development of an internal inflammatory process, then the risk of detecting an already severe stage of pneumonia increases.
When contacting a doctor with complaints of malaise, it is necessary to describe in detail the history of your own feelings. Only with a complete picture will a specialist identify signs of pneumonia and direct them to undergo examination and analysis.
Key diagnostic methods include:
- Blood test (clinical and biochemical), which allows you to determine the presence of an inflammatory process in the body.
- X-rays of light. It is considered the most important step in determining and further monitoring the disease. Allows you to see the main lesions of the lung tissue.
- Bacteriological sputum culture to determine the main causative agent of the disease and select the antibiotics necessary for pneumonia.
- A gas blood test is also done, the degree of blood saturation with oxygen is determined.
- A sputum discharge microscopy is performed to remove suspicion of tuberculosis.
A person should clearly understand that even the absence of vivid symptoms in the form of a cough does not exclude the development of the disease. Any inflammatory process can be accompanied by a slight temperature, especially with pneumonia, and you can’t close your eyes to this. Self-medication at home can remove the primary symptoms and hide the underlying disease, however, over time, the inflammatory process will return with renewed vigor.
There are a number of auxiliary (additional) studies and analyzes for pneumonia, which are aimed at clarifying the diagnosis. They are prescribed in cases where the main examination did not give a clear result and the pathological condition of the patient requires a more detailed study.
The only right advice is not to be shy and not afraid to see a doctor. The stage of pneumonia at which it will be detected plays a large role in the speed of its treatment.
Methods for treating pneumonia
A competent treatment course should be selected only by a doctor after the patient has undergone a course of examinations and has passed certain tests for pneumonia. A moderate and severe degree of the disease is treated in a hospital under the constant supervision of medical personnel.
Lighter forms of the disease can be treated at home by constantly visiting the attending physician or by organizing a medical consultation at home.
The main recommendation for the patient is to maintain bed rest, drinking plenty of fluids, which allows you to better cope with the temperature with pneumonia. The room in which the patient is located should be regularly ventilated, while a person should in no case be exposed to a draft.
The main course of treatment is aimed at the destruction of the causative agent of the disease and is called etiotropic therapy. The most commonly used antibacterial treatment using antibiotics. The dosage, frequency and duration of taking antibiotics for pneumonia is determined by a specialist, taking into account the patient's age, individual health characteristics and the nature of the disease.
For the treatment of inflammatory pathology of the lungs, drugs of various pharmacological actions are used:
- Semi-synthetic penicillins (Oxycillin, Ampicillin, Ampioks).
- Lincosamides ("Linkomycin").
- Macrolides ("Sumamed").
- Cephalosporins (Ceftriaxone).
- Fluoroquinolones ("Avelox").
- Aminoglycosides ("Gentamicin").
- Carbapenems (Meronem, Tienam).
The standard duration of an antibiotic course can last from seven days to two weeks, it is possible that in the process one doctor will replace one drug with another.
If the nature of the disease is fungal or viral, then appropriate antifungal and antiviral drugs are selected.
The main course of treatment can last about a month or more, a lot depends on the severity of the inflammation and the individual reaction of the body to the drugs. If the situation does not improve throughout this time, then additional diagnostics are carried out to exclude the development of oncology under the guise of pneumonia.
Mitigation and recovery
In combination with the main course of treatment, the treatment of the main symptoms is used. The interaction between different types of drugs is under the supervision of a physician and should not bring additional discomfort to the patient.
Symptom Treatment:
- To reduce the elevated temperature, antipyretics are prescribed.
- The use of means for liquefying sputum and its rapid removal from the lungs is recommended.
- The expansion of the bronchi with the help of bronchodilators can reduce shortness of breath.
- Immunomodulating drugs will help restore and strengthen the body's natural defenses.
- A complex of vitamins is selected to maintain poor health.
Drug treatment will effectively eliminate the causes of the disease and prevent pneumonia from developing into more serious complications. However, in order for the body to fully recover, and the results of examinations and analyzes returned to normal, it is recommended to resort to physiotherapeutic methods.
Physiotherapy is not prescribed before the temperature drops. They resort to the following methods:
- Inhalation.
- Electrophoresis
- Microwave and uhf.
- Pneumatic massage.
- Paraffin therapy.
- Physiotherapy.
The duration of trips to such procedures is limited by the complete recovery of the patient, which is confirmed by the results of the next examination, including lung X-ray.
How to protect yourself from pneumonia
Having figured out how to determine pneumonia, it is equally important to find out how to avoid it.
According to the results of medical research, we can conclude that the best means is vaccination of the population. In Russia, a vaccine of American manufacture is currently used, which has been fully tested and has shown good effectiveness in the prevention of pneumonia. This approach is usually classified as specific and applied to segments of the population that are at increased risk:
- Age over 50 years.
- Living in nursing homes.
- The presence of chronic diseases of the heart, lungs, as well as diabetes mellitus, kidney disease, HIV.
- Workers in the medical field.
- Women during pregnancy, in the second and third trimesters.
If you do not find yourself in high-risk groups, then for the prevention of pneumonia it will be enough to follow simple rules, make changes to your usual lifestyle:
- Enhance immunity in all available ways.
- Avoid sudden changes in temperature, mainly subcooling.
- Timely visit the dentist and heal carious formations.
- To refuse from bad habits.
- If possible, avoid contact with sick people.
- If work is associated with toxic production, it is best to change it.
Better care of one’s own health is vigilant attention to it. If you do not start the disease, then treating it will not be difficult.
Probable complications
Complications with pneumonia are possible either in the absence of treatment, or with the inconsistent application of the doctor's recommendations.
Being in a hospital, the risk of getting unpleasant consequences is reduced due to the constant monitoring of indicators by doctors. If the treatment takes place at home, then much depends on the personal responsibility of the patient.
The lack of competent regular treatment can provoke:
- Abscess of lung tissue.
- Accumulation of fluid in the pleural cavity.
- Accumulation of pus in the pleural cavity.
- Acute respiratory failure caused by severe inflammation.
- Transition of inflammatory bacterial foci to other organs.
If we suppose the appearance of purulent complications, then a long and serious antibiotic treatment will be required, which will cause a significant blow throughout the body. In extremely severe cases, resort to the drainage procedure.
Predictions for pneumonia
Every person who has experienced pneumonia naturally wants to know what forecasts await him, what risks he is exposed to.
Prediction of any disease is not easy and depends on a number of factors:
- The age of the patient.
- The main causative agent of the inflammatory process.
- Possible concomitant diseases that complicate the course of drug therapy.
- Weakened immunity.
- The quality and literacy of the prescribed treatment.
The most dangerous period for pneumonia is considered to be infancy, somewhere up to one year. Unfortunately, the percentage of deaths in this case varies from 10 to 30 percent.
If the patient's immunity is greatly weakened, then the effectiveness of the treatment may be questioned, but modern medicine continues to improve and produce more and more effective drugs.
The best guarantee of a happy recovery is the timely start of treatment. If you do not delay the visit to the doctor, then correct therapy leads to an inevitable recovery.
Symptoms are signals that the body needs help. Such things should not go unnoticed.