You may be wondering how a diagnosis of lung impairment is made when many of the symptoms are the same. It is important to understand how any organ of our body responds to some type of insult (infection, toxic chemicals, drugs, etc.).
When it comes to lung diseases the three characteristic symptoms that occur are wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath. I call these symptoms the trinity of lung disease. In fact, I often tell patients that if you do not have either wheezing, cough or shortness of breath you may be in the wrong office. Why are these the usual symptoms of lung disease?
The lungs, like any other so-called end organ have only a few ways to respond to a disease insult. The lungs have airways, lung tissue and blood vessels. Regardless of what disease or environmental agent is presented to the lungs, these are the only parts that can be affected and when challenged with some type of insult they can only respond in a few ways and these responses result in one or more of the symptoms of wheezing, coughing or shortness of breath. However, lung disease is not the only condition that can cause these symptoms.
Patients often feel that their symptoms are characteristic for lung disease but I often point out that shortness of breath, wheezing or cough are just that, symptoms. Finding the cause for a patient’s symptoms is the job we face, and which may result in a non-lung diagnosis.
