Respiratory, aka lung, failure means you have dangerous blood levels of low oxygen and/or high carbon dioxide. In turn, low blood oxygen causes hypoxia and cyanosis.
Respiratory failure is not a disease, but the result of some condition that causes lung function problems. Lung function involves breathing and your lungs themselves.
The basic job of your lungs is to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide gas. Health promoting oxygen in and carbon dioxide, waste product of metabolism, out.
Symptoms caused by low blood oxygen level include:
- hypoxia
- acidosis
- dyspnea
- cyanosis
- confusion
- sleepiness
- headaches
- restlessness
- rapid breathing
- rapid pulse rate
These symptoms vary according to what is causing your respiratory failure.
There’s a myriad of conditions and situations that cause respiratory failure, such as:
- polio
- sepsis
- stroke
- asthma
- pollutants
- pneumonia
- lung cancer
- anaphylaxis
- sleep apnea
- emphysema
- high altitudes
- heart disease
- cystic fibrosis
- near drowning
- severe anemia
- hypothyroidism
- airway blockage
- extreme obesity
- profuse bleeding
- spinal cord injury
- chronic bronchitis
- pulmonary edema
- pulmonary fibrosis
- radiation exposure
- physical lung injury
- lung tissue damage
- muscular dystrophy
- pulmonary embolism
- Lou Gehrig’s disease
- advanced heart failure
- chest muscle disease
- blood vessel disorders
- severe infection ~ AIDS
- brain fails to drive breathing
- chronic obstructive lung disease
- smoke inhalation, extensive burns
- major abdomen, heart, lung surgery
- acute respiratory distress syndrome
- damage to bones & tissue around lungs
- lung muscle weakness ~ myasthenia gravis
- sleeping pill, antidepressant, opioid, alcohol overdose
Also, slow developing respiratory failure can cause pulmonary hypertension.
The initial treatment for respiratory failure is oxygen. Oxygen treatment is given to raise your low blood oxygen level causing hypoxia and cyanosis.
The underlying cause of respiratory failure needs be treated as well, like:
- bronchodilators ~ asthma
- antibiotics ~ lung infection
- corticosteroids ~ inflammation
- warfarin, coumadin ~ blood clots
Leaving lung failure untreated, your brain and heart can malfunction causing unconsciousness and arrhythmia. And even death.
