Whenever your lungs or airways are affected you may notice a noisy breathing sound. Common breathing and lung sounds are referred to as wheezing, rales or stridor.
Wheezing is a high pitched sound that is often heard when you breathe out, or exhale. Yet, the sound of wheezing may be heard with an inhaled breath.
Causes for wheezing include:
- lung cancer
- pulmonary edema
- pulmonary fibrosis
- parainfluenza virus
- pulmonary embolism
- aspiration pneumonia
- interstitial lung disease
- upper airway obstruction
- respiratory tract infection
- respiratory syncytial virus
- Wegener’s granulomatosis
- vascular ring, double aortic arch
- food, drug, insect bite/sting allergic reaction ~ anaphylaxis
Seek immediate medical attention if your wheezing causes:
And you’ll also need health care attention urgently if your wheezing is caused by a bite or drug related allergic reaction as well.
Rales, aka crackles, are small clicking, bubbling or rattling inhalation breathing sounds in your lungs. Believed to be caused by air opening closed air spaces, rales may suggest you have lung tissue inflammation.
Some causes for rales noisy lung sound are:
- pulmonary edema
- partial lung collapse
- Legionnaires disease
- pulmonary nocardiosis
- diffuse interstitial lung
- pulmonary eosinophilia
- congestive heart failure
- acute mountain sickness
- hypersensitivity pneumonitis
Stridor is a noisy high pitched or crowing breathing sound usually heard when taking in a breath. It’s typically caused by an obstruction of airflow or muscle spasm in your trachea, larynx or throat.
A few causes of stridor consists of:
- airway injury
- tonsil abscess
- swollen adenoids
- neck, face swelling
- inhaling foreign object
- smoke inhalation, other inhalation
- vocal cord paralysis ~ myasthenia gravis
Some causes for noisy wheezing breathing may cause stridor as well. And visa versa.
Always consider seeking immediate health care attention for a young child with unexplained stridor because they have narrower airways, thus at a higher risk for total air blockage.
And the inability to breath in or out isn’t a health state that supports life.