Bronchiectasis: Understanding Your Lungs

And then some of the diagnostic tests and procedures that we're able to do, some of the imaging that we do initially would be a chest X-ray, which is like very fast and painless, and it helps to have a kind of very broad over- overlook, um, but it can't actually detect bronchiectasis except in very extreme cases.

But it's, can give us an idea if there's like, um, hyperinflation of the airways.

Um, but the way that we would ideally diagnose it would be by a, a CT scan, which would then show very like dilated, um, airways, which can also have, as you had mentioned before, mucus plugging or mucus trapped down in the airways.

There's other things that can, um, help us i- in terms of like bronchiectasis or like hypersecretion of, um, sputum.

There's a sweat test to help, uh, determine cystic fibrosis, which is another different condition that we'll not get into too much today, but it's another one where you would have a lot of respiratory secretions.

Sputum culture is something that I think is extremely important in highlighting if there's any bacterial, um, infiltration or anything that can be cultured in the lungs, such as Pseudomonas or in fact, uh, some certain fungi and tuberculosis.

And then there are blood tests which can show, um, other things like infection that can help us look a bit further into, uh, whether or not there is this underlying condition, bronchiectasis.

Another way of doing it is scopes.

You can do a bronchoscopy, which is a little tiny camera, um, tube that's put down into the lungs to have a little look and can help gather, again, um, biopsies and samples.

What are the things that can cause bronchiectasis? We've already said that you can get an infection which can cause it, but can there be a genetic component i- if you have somebody who you know in your bloodline has had bronchiectasis before? In pa- in the past, childhood infections such as whooping cough and measles can, can cause bronchiectasis, but we don't know of any, uh, like identifiable genetic traits that would c- um, indicate that the condition is passed down.

It tends to be environmental ... um, diseases.

There is the, um, unfortunate incidence of having bronchiectasis and other respiratory conditions such as COPD or asthma or certain gastric diseases such as GERD or gastroesophageal reflux disease.

When you have a combination of bronchiectasis and these others, it can increase your risk of infection because you're hyper-secreting sputum.

But then you have these obstructive diseases such as COPD and asthma, where the airway is narrow.

So when the airway is narrow and you have very thick, tenacious sputum, it tends to increase your risk of getting infection then in the lungs because we're not able to cough and clear those, those secretions.

And so what raises your risk of getting, um, bronchiectasis? Christine, from a pharmacy point of view, would you be aware of anything that would like, or anything that we can do to help prevent getting bronchiectasis?