Respiratory Infections Flashcards
What kind of infections is the respiratory tract prone to?
Air borne infections
Terms for an infection of the lung
Pneumonia or Pneumonitis
How many L of air inhaled each day?
10,000L
Where and how many bacterial microns are held in the respiratory tract?
- > 10 in upper airways
- 3-10 trapped in tracheobronchial mucus
- 1-5 deposited in terminal airways and alveoli
- <1 in suspended alveolar air as exhaled
Defence mechanisms of the respiratory tract
- nasal clearance
- mucociliary action in tracheobronchials
- alveolar macrophages
What can suppress the cough reflex?
- coma
- anaesthesia
- drugs
- chest pain
- neuromuscular disease
What can injure the mucociliary apparatus?
- smoking
- inhalation of hot/corrosive gases
- congenital
What can disturb macrophage function?
- smoking
- alcohol
- anoxia
- O2 toxicity
What other things can disturb normal lung defence?
- pulmonary congestion
- pulmonary oedema
- accumulation of secretions
- general immune suppression
- unusually virulent organisms
Define pneumonia
Alveolar inflammation due to lung infection
3 types of pneumonia
- lobar
- bronchopneumonia
- atypical pneumonia
Lobar pneumonia features
- affects large part of lobe or entire
- previously healthy males age 20-50
- 90% strep penumonie cause
Clinical features of lobar pneumonia
- high grade fever with rigors
- productive cough
- rusty sputum
- pleuritic chest pain
- signs of consolidation
4 stages of lobar pneumonia
- congestion
- red hepatisation
- grey hepatisation
- resolution
Congestion stage of lobar pneumonia
- first
- 24 hours
- vessels engorged
- alveolar oedema
- heavy red lung
Red hepatisation in lobar pneumonia
- 2-4 days
- outpouring neutrophils and RBCs into alveoli
- red, solid, airless, liver like lung
Grey hepatisation in lobar pneumonia
- 4-8 days
- fibrin and macrophages replace neutrophils and RBCs
- grey, solid, airless lung
Resolution stage in lobar pneumonia
- last
- 8-10 days
- gradual return to normal