00:00
The past medical history
is important, because
respiratory disease can be a consequence or
related to previous medical problems. And
there are numerous examples, but the common
important ones are asthma, which childhood
asthma often returns in an older adult and,
therefore, could explain somebody who's presenting
with cough or breathlessness at that point.
Previous tuberculosis for two reasons: One
is that actually TB often causes chronic lung
damage, which can cause the presentation that
you're reviewing the patient for there—hemoptysis,
for example—due to underlying bronchiectasis
caused by previous tuberculosis or a mycetoma.
And also, previous tuberculosis means the
patient could have—well, has latent tuberculosis
and therefore is at risk of reactivated tuberculosis
disease, which might explain their presentation.
Hay fever and eczema (atopy) we've already
discussed as a risk for asthma. Cardiac problems
are important really as a differential diagnosis
for respiratory patients who are presenting
with dyspnea or edema. So if somebody's got
a past history of hypertension, diabetes,
ischemic heart disease, all these are predisposed
to left ventricular failure, which would be
a cause of breathlessness as a differential
diagnosis of somebody presenting to a respiratory
clinic.
01:15
Previous cancer is important, because the
patient may be presenting with metastases
from the cancer now affecting the respiratory
system such as, for example, pleural metastases
and pleural effusion. Or because the treatment
that they receive for their cancer—and the
classic example for that would be radiotherapy
for breast cancer—can cause damage to the
underlying lung, and that might explain why
the patient has respiratory symptoms at that
time. And chemotherapy, for example, can cause
both widespread lung damage in the form of
interstitial lung disease but also makes patients
more likely to get various types of infection,
and that might be why they're presenting with
lung disease.
01:50
Patients with bronchiectasis: One of the major
causes is previous severe childhood infections,
and so those would need to be discussed if
somebody might have bronchiectasis. And connective
tissue diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis,
systemic lupus erythematosus, dermatomyositis,
systemic sclerosis: They are all associated
with various types of lung disease, specifically
lung interstitial infiltrations, which could
be a differential diagnosis in somebody presenting
with fibrosis. And a very important point
is that premature birth and poor lung development
in very early life actually, by reducing your
overall lung volumes, makes you more likely
to develop diseases such as COPD in the future.
And if somebody's presenting with relatively
early onset of breathlessness, it would be
worth working out whether they had a premature
birth that might have predisposed them to
an earlier problem than they otherwise would
have developed.
With lung disease, because the lungs are exposed
to the environment, what you do in that environment
has a very big effect on the potential diseases
you might have. And the most obvious example
for that is that if you smoke. But there are
other substances which are relevant—for
example, if you smoke cannabis or if you inject
drugs. In addition, the jobs that you do can
expose you to various dusts and things which
may be relevant for lung disease—the classic
example being asbestos exposure and the risk
of asbestos pleural disease, the other main
example being pneumoconiosis, which are associated
with mining and factory work.
But asthma can be made worse by antigens which
are present in your work environment, and
that's so-called occupational asthma. And
hypersensitivity pneumonitis is a problem
where you get lung interstitial… so you
get interstitial lung disease due to inhalation
of an antigen to which you're allergic, and
that is often due to exposure to birds or,
if you're a farmer, due to fungi which grow
in the hay, etc. So it's very important with
respiratory disease—and specifically for
interstitial lung diseases, asthma, and patients
presenting with infiltrates in the lung—to
identify their occupational history and social
factors that might be relevant for their presentation.
04:27
Lastly, if you have a lung disease and you
are more breathless than you should be, then
there is the issue about who's going to be
looking after you. If you're… have MRC Grade
4, for example, and you're breathless on moving
around the house, who will do the housework
for you? Who will go and get the shopping
for you? And these issues are important and
a part of the social history and need to be
discussed with the patient, so you get a full
feel for the effects of whatever respiratory
disease they may have on their actual function
in life.
So to go into substance use, misuse, and abuse
in a bit more detail: Cigarette smoking is
associated with COPD but also… and lung
cancer; everyone knows that. But it also massively
increases your chance of pneumonia. It makes
asthma very difficult to control. It increases
your chance of pneumothorax. And it is associated
with interstitial lung disease as well. Alcohol
is not a major problem for lung disease, apart
from the fact that it makes you more likely
to get infections such as pneumonia or tuberculosis,
and it makes you likely to get aspiration.
So it's a classic presentation is that somebody
has been out for a drink in one night and
the next day presents having aspirated, with
a pneumonitis affecting one lung.
Also, alcohol is a sedative, and that does
cause problems for patients with sleep apnea
and other problems of ventilation of the lung,
where sedatives make the ventilation… the
underventilation that's occurring even worse.
05:52
And patients with alcoholic liver disease
will present with pleural effusions. Recreational
drugs other than smoking and alcohol—cocaine,
intravenous heroin, crack—they are all relevant
for lung disease. COPD, emphysema, asthma,
HIV infection, pneumothorax, lung infections,
tuberculosis, bullae... They're all related
to recreational drug use, and as many patients
that I see who have used to use recreational
IV drugs in their early life are now presenting
with emphysema or bullae in their later life,
age 40 to 50s.
06:31
So smoking history: This is described in pack
years. This is a vital part of the respiratory
history. You need to know whether the patient
has smoked in the past, is smoking now, or
has never smoked. So often when we ask a patient,
"Are you a smoker?" they say no. But that
could be because they gave up smoking three
weeks ago. So you just need to define whether
it's ex-smoker or never smoked. And we describe
the cigarette exposure in pack years. And
that is one pack smoked each day for a year
is one pack year. So for example if you have
somebody who smoked 10 cigarettes a day for
20 years, that's equivalent to 10 pack years.
07:13
If you have somebody who smoked for 30 years,
30 cigarettes a day, then that's 45 pack years.
07:18
In general, COPD and lung cancer, you normally
have to smoke around 20 pack years to get
the increased risk for developing both those
disease. That's a rule of thumb; there are
exceptions to that. And certainly, it doesn't
mean you will get lung cancer or COPD if you
smoke 20 pack years; it just means your chance
of developing those diseases is much, much
higher.
Treatment history and allergies: Well, you
have to know the patient's allergies if you're
going to give them… especially antibiotics.
07:49
Because penicillin allergy is not uncommon,
and you give somebody with a penicillin allergy
an antibiotic which is penicillin-based, then
that is incredibly dangerous and potentially
fatal error. So allergies: vital. You must
know… must ask specifically about allergies.
08:04
But also, drug diseases cause respiratory
problems. The commonest example, perhaps,
may be ACE inhibitors, which are used for
hypertension, and they are a common cause
of chronic, intractable cough. And unless
you take a good treatment history and ask
the patient directly, you may not get the
fact that they're on an ACE inhibitor volunteered.
08:24
The treatment history also gives you the chance
to double-check their past medical history,
because many patients won't mention the fact
that they have hypertension, but then when
you ask them about what drugs they're on,
it turns out they're on antihypertensives.
08:36
That's a very common example of how patients
think about their diseases.
08:42
Family history for respiratory disease is
important in certain circumstances. There
are diseases that run in families—-asthma,
for example—and there are inherited genetic
diseases, such as cystic fibrosis. And in
addition, prior tuberculosis exposure makes
you… through your family members makes you
likely to have latent tuberculosis, and that
might reflect what's happening with your presentation
in a future life.
09:11
So just to summarize the main learning points
for the clinical assessment, the history side
of the clinical assessment:
1. A good history is essential and will help
you identify what the medical problem is in
a very high proportion of patients who are
presenting. It will at least identify the
clinical question that needs to be answered
by targeted investigation. And this requires
a systematic approach to the history to ensure
every aspect is covered that might be important.
2. The demography, the social history, of
the patient is important, because that does
identify whether they are at risk of certain
diseases. And you need to learn about what
those associations are so you can ask the
relevant questions for people presenting with
specific problems.
09:58
3. You do need to know what causes the symptoms.
So you have to know what the common causes
of cough are, what the common causes of breathlessness
are. Now fairly obvious, most of this, but
if you don't know the important causes of
symptoms, then you will not be able to exclude
or include those causes in a differential
diagnosis when discussing a problem with a
patient. And that does include the rarer causes
as well, because part of the art of medicine
is to make sure that you don't always make
the common diagnosis. So if a patient's presenting
with cough, say it's asthma. But in fact,
actually, it may not always be asthma. There
are the occasional patients with rarer conditions
which may be coming, which you would miss
unless you knew that might be a presentation
for… a cause of cough.
10:50
4. One aspect that often is underdone by students
is the detail of the history of the presenting
complaint. So I've discussed earlier when
talking about breathlessness: You need to
find out how long the patient's been breathless;
the periodicity—whether it's up and down,
whether it's constant, whether it's progressive.
And actually ask very specific questions to
get a full feel for how fast if it's progressive
it's deteriorating or how severe the breathlessness
is; what it stops them doing. And that needs
to be done for all the sort of symptoms that…
all the symptoms that the patient's presenting
with. Obviously, this requires a bit of practice,
and taking a good history which is fast, efficient,
and targeted to get the information you require
will require a detailed underlying knowledge
about respiratory disease as well as constant
practice of actually the art of taking the
history from a patient.
11:50
Thank you.