Question

Ruta is a 36 years old female with a weight of 60kg. She was admitted to the hospital on 15/04/2020. She was just getting home from her gardening and she just felt uneasy to breathe. She has been noticing for a while that she is having trouble in breathing and her chest tightens. She is also having coughing with mucus. She said because of shortness of breath (SOB), sometimes she is not able to speak in full sentence. She also stays awake occasionally in the night because of SOB and wheezing. Her past medical histories were hypercholesterolemia and asthma. She has no known drug and food allergy. She is working occasionally now and is living alone. She is a smoker and drinks occasionally. She has no known family history. The Emergency Department (ED) doctor has diagnosed her with Exacerbation of Asthma.

She is on salbutamol 200mcg as required.

Question

1.. The clinical manifestations of asthma include: GROUP A GROUP B

Group A	Group B
Cough	Airway oedema
Hypoxia	Increased respiratory rate
Wheeze	Increased heart rate
Tight chest	Dyspnoea

Choose ONE clinical manifestion from GROUP A and ONE clinical manifestation from GROUP B and relate them to the underlying pathophysiology for your person (Ms. Ruta)

Answer 1

Asthma is a genetic disorder caused due to the abnormal inflammation of airway which causes difficulty in breathing and leads to hypoxia.

In case of this patient the clinical manifestation from group A cough is developed due to as any of the trigger factor airway inflammation occurs and it's leads to construction of airway or hypersecretion of mucus in the airway. So due to this hypersecretion of mucus the lungs try to expell out mucus by inducing cough. Likewise DYSPNOEA is from the group B clinical manifestation developed due to the narrowing of airway causes difficulty in flow of air. Because of this the SOB or wheezhing occurs.