Pulmonary Edema?

Specialties Critical

Published

I am a new grad in the ICU. This may be a silly question but can someone tell me what pulmonary edema sounds like? When I do my assessment on my patients and I listen to his or her lung sounds many times the bases sound diminshed or I can hear bowel sounds (because they are laying)...does it sound gurgly? loud? Is there anything I can key into?

I know to look at O2 sats, distress, anxiety, shortness of breath...but what if the patient is not experiencing any of these symptoms or they cannot communicate this to me.

I would appreciate any feed back, correction, guidance...

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Specializes in CTICU.

Pulmonary edema = fluid in the lungs. You will hear crackles, esp coorifice crackles. Often you don't need to (or have time to) listen, because with flash pulmonary edema, you'll see frothing at the mouth fairly immediately.

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Thank you soooo much for replying and answering my question. You really shed some light on the subject for me. :)

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

You will benefit from some of the links in this thread, lostmap:

Helpful Information for the CCU and other Critical Care Units

Especially these links:

http://www.wilkes.med.ucla.edu/intro.html

http://sprojects.mmi.mcgill.ca/mvs/

http://www.rale.ca/

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These websites are great. Thank you sooooo much for your reply. :)

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