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Acute Asthma Essay

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Asthma Asthma represents a lasting inflammatory airway condition characterized by hyper-responsiveness of the airways accompanied by repeated episodes of breathlessness, coughing, wheezing, and chest tightness. Such episodes have commonly been linked to airflow blocks which can be spontaneously reversed or sometimes require medication. Roughly three hundred million individuals worldwide suffer from asthma. Among children, boys exhibit greater asthma risk whilst among adults, women exhibit greater prevalence. A grasp of the condition’s pathophysiology (both acute and chronic forms) will facilitate an understanding of how to diagnose and treat patients suffering from it. Experts’ asthma pathogenesis knowledge has greatly evolved during the past twenty-five years with scholars discovering several phenotypes of the condition (Lynn & Kushto-Reese, 2015).

Pathophysiology of Acute Asthma

Acute asthma intensification, or asthmatic attacks, take place through binding of inhaled antigens to mast cells performing immunoglobulin E (IgE). These cells start degranulating, thereby releasing bradykinins, prostaglandins, leukotrienes, platelet-activating factors, histamine, interleukins, and other inflammatory mediators which lead to airway muscle bronchospasms and edema owing to enhanced capillary permeability. Further, goblet cells’ enhanced mucus secretion constricts the patient’s airway. Antigens are spotted by dendritic cells and a signal is sent to the Th2 cells that secrete interleukin -4, among other things. Such interleukins stimulate IgE production by B cells. Additionally, Th2 cells may generate IL-5 that stimulates eosinophils, responsible for creating eosinophilic cationic and...

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A number of inflammatory cells (e.g., neutrophils, IgE) play a role in causing inflammation and obstructing the airway (Conley, 2017).
Pathophysiology of Chronic Asthma

The term ‘chronic asthma’ largely revolves around asthma’s long-run implications. Chronic asthmatics are at an advanced stage of the condition, marked by lasting damage. This condition is usually characterized by greater type 2 inflammation sensitivity, vitiated lung growth, increased viral infection susceptibility, or bacterial colonization. Among patients at this stage, dendritic cells, eosinophils, neutrophils, basophils, lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, mast cells and T helper 2 cells stimulate airway hyper-responsiveness and intractable bronchial mucosa inflammation (Conley, 2017).

Chronic and acute asthma, to some extent, resemble one another in terms of symptoms and elementary treatment. But the key difference between the two is how long the episode lasts. Acute asthma is temporary whilst chronic asthmatic attacks are prolonged and can continue for a long period (MyAsthmaGuide, 2018).

Pathmavathi, Subash and Sumangali’s (2013) arterial blood gas (ABG) examination on a total of forty subjects aimed at assessing ABG status among chronic and acute bronchial asthmatics. Acute asthmatics’ typical ABG pattern revealed hypoxaemia accompanied by respiratory acidosis among a fairly large share of subjects and hypoxaemia accompanied by respiratory alkalosis among the remaining (i.e. subjects depicting abnormality in ABG patterns). Meanwhile, chronic asthmatics exhibited hypoxaemia accompanied by respiratory alkalosis among a…

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