Physical exam. Your doctor will listen to your lungs with a stethoscope. If you have pneumonia, your lungs may make crackling, bubbling, and rumbling sounds when you inhale.
You can have fine crackles, which are shorter and higher in pitch, or coarse crackles, which are lower. Either can be a sign that there's fluid in your air sacs. They can be caused by: Pneumonia.
Absent or decreased sounds can mean: Air or fluid in or around the lungs (such as pneumonia, heart failure, and pleural effusion)
Crackles. These may be either coarse or fine. They are discontinuous, interrupted explosive sounds. Coarse crackles or crepitations are associated with bronchiectasis or resolving pneumonia, whereas fine crackles can be heard with either pulmonary oedema or interstitial fibrosis.
Physical findings of pneumonia include tachypnea, crackles, rhonchi, and signs of consolidation (egophony, bronchial breath sounds, dullness to percussion).
The patient may be febrile, tachycardic, and breathless at rest. Auscultation of the chest may reveal crackles, rales, or bronchial breathing, and there may be presence of dullness on percussion or tactile vocal fremitus.
Fine crackles are heard with pulmonary edema, pulmonary fibrosis, and pneumonia; they are predominantly inspiratory and described as above. Coarse crackles are usually heard at the beginning of expiration and are characteristic of bronchiectasis.
Bronchitis can also, however, bring on chest discomfort and wheezing. While symptoms for either bronchitis or pneumonia can range from mild to serious enough to require hospitalization, symptoms such as fever, breathing problems, and chest pain tend to be more severe with pneumonia.
Physical exam
Your doctor will listen to your lungs with a stethoscope. If you have pneumonia, your lungs may make crackling, bubbling, and rumbling sounds when you inhale.
Crackles - lung sounds recorded a stethoscope
Crackles, or rales, are a scratchy sound quality evident when fluid fills up in the alveolar and interstitial spaces. These sounds can be focal and coarse in localized areas of pulmonary edema or consolidation in pneumonia.
Chest radiograph (preferred) — The presence of an infiltrate on plain chest radiograph is considered the gold standard for diagnosing pneumonia when clinical and microbiologic features are supportive.
In the Emergency Department, pneumonia cannot reliably be confirmed or excluded by auscultation, or indeed physical examination, alone.
With pneumonia, decreased breath sounds, wheezing, or crackles on listening to the lungs, are all indications that can help point towards a diagnosis.
A chest infection is an infection of the lungs or airways. The main types of chest infection are bronchitis and pneumonia. Most bronchitis cases are caused by viruses, whereas most pneumonia cases are due to bacteria. These infections are usually spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
Common symptoms of pneumonia include: a cough – which may be dry, or produce thick yellow, green, brown or blood-stained mucus (phlegm) difficulty breathing – your breathing may be rapid and shallow, and you may feel breathless, even when resting.
Walking pneumonia symptoms include: Dry cough that's persistent and typically gets worse at night.
Pneumonia, a lung infection, can cause coughing, hacking, or wheezing. You might think it's just a cold or the flu.
Fever, sweating and shaking chills. Lower than normal body temperature (in adults older than age 65 and people with weak immune systems). Nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. Shortness of breath.
These four stages of pneumonia are congestion, red hepatization, gray hepatization, and resolution, respectively.
Stage one: Congestion. The first stage of pneumonia occurs around 24 hours after developing an infection in the lungs. It also lasts for about 24 hours. During the congestion stage, the bacteria or virus has taken hold in the lungs and caused an infection.
Crackles, also known as rales, are intermittent sounds generally audible during inhalation. They can sound similar to bubbling, popping, or clicking noises. Experts define a crackle as: Fine: These occur in the small airways and are soft and high pitched.
Crackles, on the other hand, are only heard by a stethoscope and are a sign of too much fluid in the lung. Pulmonary edema is a common example, often a byproduct of heart failure.