Tuesday 14 June 2016

Pain and Lung Disease-Loss of Lung Elasticity-Loss of Lung Distensibility

Pain and Lung Disease
Lung tissue and the visceral pleura are devoid of pain-sensitive nerve endings, so that pain in the chest is always the result of conditions affecting the surrounding structures. In tuberculosis or pneumonia, for example, pain may never be experienced. Once lung disease crosses the visceral pleura and the pleural cavity to involve the parietal pleura, pain becomes a prominent feature. Lobar pneumonia with pleurisy, for example, produces a severe tearing pain, accentuated by inspiring deeply or coughing. Because the lower part of the costal parietal pleura receives its sensory innervation from the lower five intercostal nerves, which also innervate the skin of the anterior abdominal wall, pleurisy in this area commonly produces pain that is referred to the abdomen. This has sometimes resulted in a mistaken diagnosis of an acute abdominal lesion.
In a similar manner, pleurisy of the central part of the diaphragmatic pleura, which receives sensory innervation from the phrenic nerve (C3, 4, and 5), can lead to referred pain over the shoulder because the skin of this region is supplied by the supraclavicular nerves (C3 and 4).


Loss of Lung Elasticity
Many diseases of the lungs, such as emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis, destroy the elasticity of the lungs, and thus the lungs are unable to recoil adequately, causing incomplete expiration. The respiratory muscles in these patients have to assist in expiration, which no longer is a passive phenomenon.

Loss of Lung Distensibility
Diseases such as silicosis, asbestosis, cancer, and pneumonia interfere with the process of expanding the lung in inspiration. A decrease in the compliance of the lungs and the chest wall then occurs, and a greater effort has to be undertaken by the inspiratory muscles to inflate the lungs.






















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