Overview of respiratory therapy practice and clinical applications

Resp Report

The Progress of Respiratory Distress

Respiratory issues are increasingly commonplace and increasingly dangerous to overall health and even life as patient age increases. In the article examined for this report, the patient presenting is not especially old, being only fifty-six years of age, but the manner in which his initial respiratory distress was initially handled by physicians and the progression of the patient's condition to his ultimate death is indicative of many of the issues and complications that might arise in presentations of respiratory distress and disturbance. In the meantime, the fact that many of the tests performed by physicians in this case failed to return conclusive results and that, indeed, the patient ultimately died despite the degree of attention paid to him points to the lack of full and total comprehension of respiratory distress and related symptoms and illnesses that exists, such that the physicians were unable to effectively address the multitude of issues that arose for the patient during the progression of his condition. From a purely academic standpoint, the failures in this case actually allow for abundant and effective additions to the knowledge regarding these issues.

The first way in which this can be seen is in the initial treatment and dismissal of the patient when he first presented with respiratory complaints. The other symptoms that the patient complains of at this initial presentation include fever and non-productive cough, which was in large part responsible for the initial diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia. Though this diagnosis was not necessarily an error, it obviously (in hindsight) did not adequately address the seriousness of the patient's condition or perhaps a complete diagnosis.

Six days after his initial complaint, the patient returned with worsening symptoms and was admitted to the hospital. No bacterial or viral infections could be found, but the patient was treated with antibiotics anyway as his symptoms suggested that his respiratory distress and other symptoms were due to some sort of infection. The fact that his condition continued to worsen without any notable effect from broad-spectrum antibiotics suggests that perhaps the physicians erred in this assessment, and that the negative results of the many tests for infectious agents administered to the patient were more accurate than the physicians thought. Focusing attentions more immediately on other potential causes and more direct methods of symptom relief, either in addition to or instead of the antibiotic treatment and observation that constituted the primary means of treatment at this stage, might have prevented or at least postponed the need for intubation and the mechanical assistance of the patient's breathing that was implemented on the fourth day of his hospitalization.