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 pneumothorax. And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero definals.com slash pneumothorax or in the respiratory section of

the Zero to Finals Medicine book. So let's get straight into it. A pneumothorax or in the respiratory section of the zero to finals medicine book. So let's get straight into it.

A pneumothorax occurs when air gets into the plural space that separates the lungs from the chest wall.

It can occur spontaneously or it can occur secondary to other things like trauma, medical interventions or lung pathology.

The typical patient with a pneumothorax in your exams is a young, tall, thin young man

presenting with sudden shortness of breath and pleuritic chest pain, possibly whilst playing

sports. So if you see a patient like this appear in your exam, think about a pneumothorax.

Let's talk about the causes, like we said, it can be spontaneous.

So a pneumothorax can occur for apparently no reason.

It can be secondary to trauma.

So think about it if somebody's been in a bicycle accident or a traffic accident or something like that.

It can be iatrogenic, which means it's due to something that we've done, some medical interventions,

and this could be a lung biopsy, it could be mechanical ventilation, or insertion of a central line,

and it can occur due to lung pathology like infection,

asthma or COPD.

The way to diagnose a pneumothorax is to use a chest x-ray, and an erect chest x-ray,

particularly is the investigation of choice for diagnosing a simple pneumothorax.

And by erect, we mean that we want the patient to be

standing upright with their lungs fully expanded so we get a really clear picture of the lung

fields. An erect chest x-ray will show an area between the lung tissue and the chest wall

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