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Medical Emergencies · Chapter 13 Not started
Respiratory Emergencies
Recognizing inadequate breathing and supporting patients with asthma, COPD, and hyperventilation.
Key points
- Adequate breathing is quiet, effortless, and regular — adult rate roughly 12–20/min. Accessory muscle use, tripoding, or one-word sentences signal distress.
- Asthma is reversible lower-airway constriction: wheezing, prolonged exhalation; assist the patient with their own prescribed inhaler per protocol.
- A silent chest in an asthmatic is worse than a wheezing one — no air movement means imminent failure.
- COPD patients live with chronic disease; a bad day for them means worsening distress, and oxygen should not be withheld from a hypoxic patient.
- Hyperventilation with anxiety is a diagnosis of exclusion — never assume it before ruling out serious causes; coach calm slow breathing.
- Respiratory failure precedes arrest: assist ventilations with a BVM when breathing becomes inadequate, not after it stops.
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