INTRODUCTION

A broad spectrum of medical and traumatic breathing disorders present themselves to the emergency department. As for any other patient presentation, focus your attention on the presenting complaint, and do a directed history and clinical examination. However, because disorders of many systems can lead to respiratory symptoms, it is important not to be too narrow in your approach. Good examples include severe anemia presenting as fatigue and shortness of breath, or heart failure presenting as wheezing.

We are going to concentrate on the identification and management of injuries compromising the airway and breathing - for practical and self explanatory reasons airway and breathing can be considered together, rather than as separate entities. We are however going to concentrate on chest injuries in this section.

Many medical disorders such as asthma, chronic obstructive airways disease (CO PD), pulmonary embolism, pulmonary o edema, and lower respiratory infections such as acute bronchitis and pneumonia also present to the emergency doctor. These are not going to be presented in this module, but it is necessary for you to do further reading on these conditions, and be able to competently assess and manage these medical conditions.