Health and You

Archive for March 16th, 2010

Respiratory disease refers to group of diseases that occur in the respiratory system of the body. It covers a variety of disease ranging from mild natured diseases like common cold to fatal diseases like pulmonary embolism and bacterial pneumonia. Diseases that occur in respiratory tracts, pleural cavity, trachea, bronchial tubes lungs and muscles associated to breathing come under the respiratory diseases. Respiratory diseases are found to be one of the major causes of death and illness. This article deals with various types of respiratory diseases, symptoms diagnosis and treatment of the respiratory diseases.

How respiratory diseases are classified?
Usually the respiratory diseases are categorized on the basis of the organ, cause and symptoms involved in the disease. Some of the respiratory diseases are mentioned as follows. One such type is the obstructive lung disease. In this disease narrowing of the bronchial tubes occur. This makes the passage of air through the tubes extremely difficult. The other type is the restrictive lung disease. In this disease type loss of lung compliance happens and is otherwise called as interstitial diseases of the lung.

Upper respiratory tract infection and lower respiratory infection are the types of respiratory tract infections. The former type is usually common cold and also includes tonsillitis and sinusitis, etc. The typical example of the latter type is pneumonia which is an infection of lung due to bacterial infection.

Respiratory diseases can be also tumors. These tumors can be benign or malignant. Some of the common types of tumors occurring in the respiratory system are adenocarcinoma, small cell and non small cell types of tumor in lung, head and neck cancer, lymphoma, melanoma, mesothelioma etc.

The respiratory diseases also include pleural cavity diseases like emphysema and pulmonary vascular diseases.