A pneumothorax occurs when air enters the pleural cavity\u2014the space between the two layers of the pleural membrane surrounding the lungs\u2014and causes a lung to collapse, leading to chest pain and shortness of breath.
A pneumothorax may occur spontaneously\u2014more commonly in tall, thin young men\u2014or following a chest injury. A pneumothorax may also occur as a complication of conditions such as a chest infection, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, or lung cancer.
A penetrating chest injury may cause a tension pneumothorax where, with each breath, more air is drawn into the pleural cavity. This prevents blood from returning to the heart from the lungs, causing fainting and shock; a tension pneumothorax can be life-threatening.
A small pneumothorax may clear up without treatment in a few days.
A large pneumothorax or a tension pneumothorax may be treated by inserting a tube or hollow needle into the chest to allow the air to escape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A pneumothorax occurs when air enters the pleural cavity\u2014the space<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-med-signs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kidneydiseaseclinic.net\/kdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}