Discipline Focus: Respiratory medicine deals with everything from asthma and infection to emboli and chronic lung disease—it’s a system where timing is everything.
This case opens with shortness of breath, but the cause is far from obvious. You’ll follow the clues through the upper and lower airways, explore the role of oxygenation, and learn how to weigh acute vs chronic causes. From wheeze to crackles, and from chest X-rays to blood gases, we’ll help you build a step-by-step approach to one of the most common—and most life-threatening—presenting symptoms in medicine.