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Dyspnea is a subjective sensation of heavy breathing and/or objective respiratory
impairment. Its pathogenesis is mainly connected with two factors: 1) accumulation of
carbonic acid in the blood and stimulation of the breathing center: 2) lung tissue mobility
reduction, that is, increasing lung resistance.
Depending on the predominant impairment of a certain breathing stage, they
distinguish between inspiratory, expiratory, and mixed dyspnea.
Inspiratory dyspnea occurs with air passage disorder in primary bronchi, larynx, and
trachea (laryngeal edema, tumors, foreign particles). Inhale can be hampered up to the
point of hissing and noisy breath which is called stridor (> Lat. hiss). Stridor is
characterized by a distant breath that may be heard at some distance from the patient
and is similar in timbre (!) to tracheal breathing, bronchial respiration or amphoric breath
sounds. It can also be characterized by hissing hoarse or even sonorous rasping noise at
hampered inhale which becomes less evident at exhale.
Stridor can accompany spasmophilia, hysteria, craniocerebral injury, eclampsia, liquids
or solids aspiration, larynx trauma, its incomplete obstruction by a foreign particle, allergic
edema, tumors, etc.
Acute stridor can be caused by laryngotracheites accompanying measles, influenza,
chickenpox, scarlatina, and other infectious diseases.
Gradually progressive stridor can mostly be caused by tumors either obtruding larynx
or trachea lumen or constraining them from the outside.
Expiratory dyspnea is mainly connected with exhale impairment. It occurs with
accessory bronchus and bronchiole spasm. Most frequently it accompanies bronchial
asthma. Mixed dyspnea is characteristic of lung diseases, and it can also accompany
heart diseases.
According to pathogenesis, there can be pulmonary, cardiac, anemic dyspnea, etc.
Asthma is an attack-like abrupt dyspnea. It occurs not only with lung diseases
(bronchial asthma), but also with a number of other disease states