Physical exam. Your doctor will listen to your lungs with a stethoscope. If you have pneumonia, your lungs may make crackling, bubbling, and rumbling sounds when you inhale.
Bacterial pneumonia is more serious and often results in a gurgling sound when breathing and mucus or phlegm when coughing.
When to see a doctor. See your doctor if you have difficulty breathing, chest pain, persistent fever of 102 F (39 C) or higher, or persistent cough, especially if you're coughing up pus. It's especially important that people in these high-risk groups see a doctor: Adults older than age 65.
Early symptoms are similar to influenza symptoms: fever, a dry cough, headache, muscle pain, and weakness. Within a day or two, the symptoms typically get worse, with increasing cough, shortness of breath and muscle pain. There may be a high fever and there may be blueness of the lips.
Chest pain is one of the most common symptoms of pneumonia. Chest pain is caused by the membranes in the lungs filling with fluid. This creates pain that can feel like a heaviness or stabbing sensation and usually worsens with coughing, breathing or laughing.
Most cases of viral pneumonia are mild and get better without treatment within 1 to 3 weeks. Some cases are more serious and require a hospital stay.
Your GP may be able to diagnose pneumonia by asking about your symptoms and examining your chest. Further tests may be needed in some cases. Pneumonia can be difficult to diagnose because it shares many symptoms with other conditions, such as the common cold, bronchitis and asthma.
Viruses that infect the respiratory tract may cause pneumonia. Viral pneumonia is often mild and goes away on its own within a few weeks. But sometimes it is serious enough that you need to get treatment in a hospital.
The ways to tell bronchitis and pneumonia apart are typically you would need to obtain an x-ray, a chest radiograph to determine if there are signs of consolidation or infiltrate on the chest radiograph. If that is found, typically that is more consistent with pneumonia.
1. Congestion. This is typically the first stage of infection that occurs after a pneumonia infection has dominated one of the lobes in your lung. The congestion stage typically lasts around 24 hours, and your lungs become inflamed, red, and weighed down by infection.
Often viral cases of pneumonia begin as congestion and cough with or without fever in the first few days. When a doctor listens to the lungs and finds breathing sounds are not clear on either side of the chest, a viral cause over bacterial is even more highly suspected.
While most colds are minor and go away on their own with rest and fluids, symptoms overlap with more serious ailments, such as bronchitis and pneumonia. For example, all three can cause fatigue, but only pneumonia might include a high fever, chills or nausea.
Crackles: These sounds occur if the small air sacs in the lungs fill with fluid and there's air movement in the sacs, such as when you're breathing. The air sacs fill with fluid when a person has pneumonia or heart failure. Wheezing: This sound occurs when the bronchial tubes become inflamed and narrowed.
Walking pneumonia usually indicates a more mild pneumonia caused by a bacteria called mycoplasma pneumoniae. If you have walking pneumonia, your symptoms will be mild and you'll probably function normally. Walking pneumonia symptoms include: Dry cough that's persistent and typically gets worse at night.
The typical pneumonia treatment plan consists of rest, antibiotics, and increased fluid intake. You should take it easy even if your symptoms begin to subside. Depending on the cause of pneumonia, your doctor may prescribe an antiviral medication instead of an antibiotic.
If you develop signs of pneumonia in addition to a fever over 100 degrees F, trouble breathing and feeling weak, seek medical attention at once. Any delay could put your life at risk.
Different lung infections give off different sounds when listened to through a stethoscope. With pneumonia you may hear bubbling in the lungs or crackling in the chest area. Pneumonia is often accompanied by fever and coughing up of blood, which can be detected with this technique too.
However, if left untreated, pneumonia can lead to serious complications, including an increased risk of re-infection, and possible permanent damage to your lungs. One complication from bacterial pneumonia is the infection can enter your blood stream and infect other systems in your body.
Walking pneumonia is usually diagnosed through a physical examination. The doctor will check your child's breathing and listen for a hallmark crackling sound that often indicates walking pneumonia. If needed, a chest X-ray or tests of mucus samples from the throat or nose might be done to confirm the diagnosis.
Walking pneumonia is an informal term for pneumonia that isn't severe enough to require bed rest or hospitalization. You may feel like you have a cold. The symptoms are generally so mild that you don't feel you need to stay home from work or school, so you are out walking around.
Upper respiratory infections: Infections such as the common cold, the flu, and pneumonia can cause coughing and a tickling sensation in the airways.