Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be

talking to you about chest infections. If you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero definals.com slash chest infections or in the infectious diseases

section of the Zero to definals medicine book.

Let's get straight into it.

Chest infections typically present with a cough and sputum production and they might have

shortness of breath, fever, lethargy and crackles in the chest.

Remember that viral bronchitis is very common,

and this will also present with a productive cough,

but it doesn't necessarily need antibiotics.

So you need to build up your clinical experience

in differentiating between a lower respiratory tract infection

that's caused by a bacteria and viral bronchitis.

The common bacterial causes of a chest infection are streptococcus pneumonia which causes about 50% and hemophilus influenza which causes about 20% of chest

infections. There are a few other causes and they have some typical associations

that you can link them with in patients presenting in exam situations. One of them is

Moraxela-cateralis and this occurs in immunocompromise patients or patients who have chronic

pulmonary disease such as COPD or bronchiectasis.

Pseudomonas agenosa is something that presents in patients with cystic fibrosis or bronchiectasis.

And this is a bug that likes to sit there long term and cause recurrent infections,

and it can be quite difficult to treat.

If you see somebody with this bug, think about cystic fibrosis or bronchiectasis.

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