Clinical features of chronic bronchitis
Patients with chronic obstructive airways disease may manifest features anywhere along the spectrum between being a pink puffer and a blue bloater. However, patients with chronic bronchitis may tend more towards the features of a blue bloater.
Clinical features of blue bloaters include:
- relatively mild dyspnoea
- loose cough and sputum - mucoid or mucopurulent
- frequent infective exacerbations
- often oedematous and readily lapse into right congestive heart failure
- palpation reveals a hyperinflated chest with reduced expansion
- percussion reveals increased resonance
- breath sounds are reduced with end-expiratory high or low pitched wheezes and early inspiratory crackles.
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