What causes fluid in the lungs?

Of course, special attention should be paid to the accumulation of fluid in the lungs. Common causes include long-term coughing, sputum, or chest tightness. If they are not effectively treated and improved, they may develop into fluid accumulation in the lungs. If some heart function diseases occur, this symptom will also appear.

1. Cough

It is the most common cause of pulmonary edema. The early cough can be very mild, often presenting as a single cough, or what we commonly call a half cough, a dry cough without sputum, and the degree of impact on work and life is not obvious. As the disease progresses, the cough may worsen; when accompanied by endobronchial tuberculosis, the cough may intensify and sometimes choking cough may occur. For patients with long-term illness, if bronchial displacement occurs, the trachea is pulled due to adhesions of the lesions, or the bronchi are deformed by compression of surrounding lymph nodes, an irritating cough may occur due to poor ventilation. This cough is like the choking cough caused by eating food, and may even cause difficulty breathing.

⒉ Coughing up phlegm

In the early stage of the disease, there is no obvious expectoration, or there is a small amount of white mucus sputum, but the amount of sputum will increase when the lesion expands or even cavities appear in the lungs. When there is infection with other pathogenic bacteria, the amount of sputum will also increase, and yellow purulent sputum may appear, and it may also be accompanied by systemic symptoms such as fever and chills.

3. Chest pain

Chest pain is also the main cause of pulmonary edema, but generally chest pain can only occur when the lesion affects the pleura, especially the parietal pleura. The parietal pleura is the tuberculosis of the front thorax and lungs. The parietal pleura is shown in Figures 2 and 3. Sometimes there is dull pain in an undetermined location, which is caused by nerve reflex and is not affected by lung breathing movement. If there is a fixed tingling pain in a certain area and it gets worse with breathing and coughing, it means that the inflammation is irritating the pleura. Some patients often feel pain in the shoulders or upper abdomen, which is most likely caused by inflammation irritating the diaphragm through nerve reflexes.

4. There are many causes of pulmonary edema, such as pulmonary hypertension, high blood pressure, liver disease, renal insufficiency, heart failure, etc., but the proportion of pulmonary edema caused by heart disease is higher. Heart disease can cause blood that was originally transported to the entire body to accumulate in the heart. When the blood in the lungs tries to flow back to the heart, the increased pressure in the heart blocks the flow, causing water in the blood to seep into the tissue gaps and causing obstruction of lung ventilation, which in turn leads to pulmonary edema. Of course, treatment must be targeted at the cause of pulmonary edema.