Acute and Chronic Bronchitis: In a Nutshell (Nursing)

00:00 So let's wrap up this video. Chronic bronchitis is defined as a chronic productive cough for at least 3 months a year in 2 successive years. Now remember you can have acute bronchitis, which would be an episode or you can have chronic bronchitis meaning that you've had it for at least 2 years in a row for a pretty long time if you ask me, 3 months would be forever. Now chronic bronchitis patients have overactive goblet cells. They produced extra thick, extra sticky mucus that wreaks all kinds of havoc in their airways making it harder to breathe, the cilia can't function, it's just all over. So acute bronchitis is usually caused by a virus and will be self-limiting. Make sure you educate your patients so they know signs that they're getting into trouble and this acute bronchitis needs further help. Now treatment is focused on supportive care and we want to avoid empiric antibiotic therapy. Means just because you have bronchitis we're not going to take an educated guess and give you antibiotic. We're going to make sure it's not pneumonia but we're not going to give you an antibiotic because we know that 9 times out of 10 it's caused by a virus. Treatment for patients with diagnosed COPD or more severe symptoms may include a bronchodilator particularly a SABA. Thanks for watching our video today.