pneumonia symptoms in adults

Doctor Sapkota tells his patients about symptoms of pneumonia in adults. Read more here: http://bitly.com/zapiYj.

Video transcript:
Today I will be talking about how pneumonia symptoms develop in adult patients. In this video, I am not talking to my fellow health care providers but I am talking directly to you- the patient. You may be a patient concerned about symptoms or pneumonia or you may have a friend or family member who you think may have symptoms of pneumonia. This video is for you. You do not need any medical background to understand what I am going to explain. I will not be using any medical terms.###First off, let me tell you there are no universal symptoms of pneumonia that can apply to all patients. Symptoms of pneumonia depend on the specific situation of the individual patient having pneumonia. That is why instead of listing a set of symptoms just like other medical websites do, I will tell you how pneumonia symptoms develop in our body. Once you understand that, you can predict which patient may have what kind of symptoms.You have to learn a little about how we breathe to understand pneumonia.
When we breathe air in, it goes down from our nose into our throat down into our air pipes. The air pipes divide and take the air down into our 2 lungs. Each lung is like a bag of small air bubbles. Each bubble is connected by small pipes and these small pipes are connected to larger pipes. Eventually the lager pipes connect to the two branches of the air pipe. When we take air in, all these bubbles expand. When we breathe the air out, these bubbles partially collapse. This is how air moves in and out of the lungs as we breathe. In these bubbles, there are blood vessels with very thin walls. They capture the oxygen in the blood and give out carbon-dioxide. Then the blood carries oxygen to all over our body.
Now you understand what lungs are how how we breathe with them. Pneumonia is simply an infection of the lungs. When bugs get into the lungs, they settle down deep inside. They cause irritation of the nerves in these small air tubes. They cause inflammation or swelling of the lungs and they produce pus like gunky liquid that can fill up these delicate small air bubbles. This irritation can cause cough and pain with breathing. The swelling can cause difficulty breathing. The fluid in the bubbles can prevent the blood vessels from being able to pick up oxygen from the bubble.This can cause low levels of oxygen in the blood. These bugs can also produce toxins that can travel into the blood and cause fevers, chills, weakness and sometimes confusion.
Having said that, do not think that all patients with pneumonia have all of those symptoms I just mentioned. The exact symptom in an patient depends on the unique situation. If someone has a very healthy and elastic lungs their nerves are very sensitive. They may have bad cough as soon as the bug gets there and start coughing those up. The only symptoms they may have could be cough and pain in the chest with cough. If someone has damaged and scarred lungs, the nerves may not be that sensitive and they may not have much cough to start with. They probably have the pneumonia spread to a larger area of the lungs even before they start to have any symptoms. Their symptoms may be more from swelling of lungs than from irritation. They may only have symptoms of shortness of breath. Again, in patients with years of smoking, they may have saggy big lungs. In those patients the first symptom may be from low oxygen in the blood as they do not have much lung capacity or lung reserve.
This way, when you understand the basic mechanism of how pneumonia causes symptoms, you can put the unique symptoms of a patient together and see it it fits the pattern. This is the correct way to learn about pneumonia symptoms in adults. If you have any questions, leave a comment and I will talk about those in my future videos. Thanks for listening.
Thank you.