Health and You

What symptoms does respiratory disease show?
The usual symptoms of the disease are shortness of breath. This medical condition is referred as dyspnea. Persistence of cough is also a symptom. Sometimes there may be sputum production with cough. Loss of appetite, chest pain, breathing with noise, loss of weight, coughing blood, and cyanosis are the common symptoms of respiratory disease.

How diagnosis of the disease is performed?
Diagnosis of the disease involves the tests mentioned as follows. CT scan and x ray of the chest serves as one of the major tools of diagnosis. The pulmonary function test, biopsies of the pleura or the lung also serves our purpose. Ultrasound scanning and perfusion scanning is also used in diagnosis of respiratory diseases.

Common treatment procedures
The administration of vaccines is the preventive measure of the disease. The treatment involves medication of inhalation type like antibiotics, corticosteroids, anti coagulants, immune suppressants etc. the treatment method also includes surfactant replacement therapy, physiotherapy, chemotherapy, liquid and also mechanical ventilation, radiotherapy, surgery etc.

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.