Respiratory disease names

The respiratory diseases we often talk about can be divided into 3 categories and more than 20 common types according to the location of onset, pathogenic factors, and course characteristics. The most commonly mentioned names in clinical practice include the common cold, influenza, acute pharyngitis, acute tonsillitis, acute bronchitis, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchial asthma, tuberculosis, and allergic rhinitis, covering more than 90% of respiratory medical cases.

A while ago, I worked in the respiratory department of a community hospital for a week, and 22 of the 30 calls in the morning were related to respiratory problems: a little girl who had just entered the first grade coughed and her face turned red, and her mother clutched the blood test sheet and asked with red eyes whether she had pneumonia; there was also Uncle Wang, who had smoked for 32 years, and he couldn't speak the whole sentence as soon as he sat down. He opened his mouth and asked, "Am I having chronic bronchitis again?" You will find that ordinary people rarely associate the names of these diseases clearly, and many people even equate "pneumonia" with "bronchitis" and take the wrong medicine for several days.

Oh, yes, let me first mention something that people tend not to take seriously: the common cold. Don’t think that just because it is called a “cold”, it does not count as a serious respiratory disease. It is the most common type of upper respiratory tract infection, and 90% of it is caused by viruses such as rhinovirus and adenovirus. When the season changes, if your nose suddenly runs clear, your throat becomes tight, and it hurts to swallow your saliva, it is most likely that it is coming to your door. It is easily confused with influenza, which is what we often call the flu. Many people think that influenza is a "severe cold". In fact, it is a separate category of legal respiratory infectious diseases, which can directly cause severe viral pneumonia. Last winter, I treated a 28-year-old young man. He had to endure the flu for a week and refused to come to the hospital. When he came, his blood oxygen had dropped to 88. Both lungs were covered with ground glass shadows. He had to stay in the hospital for ten days. Now I am scared to think about it.

Going down to the lower respiratory tract, many people cough in the late stage of a cold and can't sleep all night long. If they go for a chest X-ray and find no abnormalities in the lung parenchyma, it's basically acute bronchitis. Here is a controversial point in the industry: many grassroots hospitals will directly diagnose bronchitis with severe symptoms as "bronchopneumonia". In fact, the respiratory department of a tertiary hospital will most likely not recognize it - pneumonia is an infection of the alveolar parenchyma, while bronchitis remains at the airway mucosa level. Although the treatment plans are not much different, the prognosis is completely different. It cannot be said that the approach at the grassroots level is wrong. The medical resources at the grassroots level are limited, and for fear of missing serious cases, it is for the safety of patients to be strict rather than lenient. It can only be said that the diagnosis and treatment logic is different in different scenarios.

You should also pay attention to the names of chronic respiratory diseases. Old smokers often call them "old chronic bronchitis". If you cough for more than three months every year for two consecutive years, you can basically be diagnosed. If it develops further, it will be chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is what we often call COPD. The airway damage of this disease is irreversible. The youngest COPD patient I have ever seen was only 37 years old. The salesman spent many years smoking, drinking and staying up late with his customers. Later, he had to climb the third floor to gasp for oxygen. What a pity. There is also bronchial asthma. More and more children are suffering from this disease. A few days ago, a mother asked me, does it mean asthma when a child wheezes? Not necessarily. Some transient wheezing is caused by viral infection, and only repeated airway hyperresponsiveness can be diagnosed. Interestingly, the academic circles are still arguing about whether to relax the diagnostic threshold for childhood asthma: one group believes that relaxing it can prevent early intervention and avoid the progression of the disease, while the other group is afraid that over-diagnosis will cause unnecessary psychological burden to parents and children. Each has its own clinical data to support it, and there is no unified conclusion yet.

There are also a few special respiratory diseases that need to be mentioned separately, such as tuberculosis. The country now provides free standardized treatment. However, many people have a dry cough in the early stage and think it is a common cold. When they cough up blood and then come to see a doctor, it has become severe. There is also the well-known new coronavirus infection. Although it is now classified as "Category B", it is essentially a respiratory virus infection, and the pneumonia it induces is still encountered in clinical practice from time to time. Oh, yes, there are also occupational respiratory diseases that are easily ignored by everyone, such as pneumoconiosis. Many workers who have worked at construction sites and mines for more than ten years are prone to contracting this disease without proper protection. The damage is irreversible. I really want to remind everyone not to feel bored when doing high-risk work. Wearing a protective mask is really better than anything else.

In fact, there is really no need to memorize the names of all respiratory diseases. If you really feel uncomfortable, don’t blindly check the number on Baidu. Get the respiratory department number of a regular hospital. For more than ten yuan, it is much more reliable than guessing and taking medicine on your own. Oh, by the way, it is spring now, and there is another disease that is most easily mistaken for a cold: allergic rhinitis. Many people sneeze and runny noses against willow catkins and sycamore catkins. Taking cold medicine for half a month has no effect. Just take anti-allergic medicine for two days. Don’t make a mistake.