Does Atelectasis Cause Fever After Surgery? Putting a Damper on Dogma (2024)

FAQs

Does Atelectasis Cause Fever After Surgery? Putting a Damper on Dogma? ›

Summary: Fever and atelectasis are common after surgery, and in the absence of infectious causative mechanisms, atelectasis is commonly thought to be a cause of fever.

Despite the ubiquity of this view, evidence that atelectasis is a cause of fever is scarce; indeed, many studies have failed to demonstrate an association between fever and atelectasis.

Atelectasis is one of the most common respiratory complications in the perioperative period, and may contribute to significant morbidity and mortality, including the development of pneumonia and acute respiratory failure.

Risk factors for developing atelectasis include: Anesthesia. Use of a breathing tube. Foreign object in the airway (most common in children)

Differential diagnosis

A number of other conditions can cause fevers following delivery including: urinary tract infections, breast engorgement, atelectasis and surgical incisions, among others.

Postoperative fever occurs in up to 90% of people who have surgery. Any type of surgery causes injury and inflammation. Part of your body's response to this injury and inflammation can be fever. Aside from this inflammatory response, atelectasis is the most common cause of postoperative fever.

Rapid, shallow breathing. Sharp pain on the affected side, if the symptoms are severe and the blockage occurred quickly. Shock with a severe drop in blood pressure and a rapid heart rate. Shortness of breath, which can be sudden and extreme in severe cases.

Most people recover from atelectasis with proper treatment within 24 hours. However, without medical intervention, atelectasis can lead to serious complications, including death.

Surgery is the most common cause of atelectasis. When anesthesia is used during surgery to keep you asleep, you don't breathe deeply enough to fill your lungs all the way or cough to clear your lungs of mucus.

Atelectasis (at-uh-LEK-tuh-sis) is the collapse of a lung or part of a lung, also known as a lobe. It happens when tiny air sacs within the lung, called alveoli, lose air. Atelectasis is one of the most common breathing complications after surgery.

Should I be worried about atelectasis? ›

Mucus that plugs the airway, foreign objects in the airway (common in children) and tumors that obstruct the airway may lead to atelectasis. Large-scale atelectasis may be life threatening, especially in someone who has another lung disease or illness.

Suctioning mucus or doing a bronchoscopy can get rid of airway blockages. During bronchoscopy, the doctor gently guides a flexible tube down your throat to clear your airways. If a tumor is causing atelectasis, treatment may involve removing or shrinking the tumor during the bronchoscopy, which may include surgery.

Deep-breathing exercises reduce atelectasis and improve pulmonary function after coronary artery bypass surgery. Chest.

Most early postoperative fever is caused by the inflammatory stimulus of tissue damage and exposure to foreign materials (ie, physiologic fever) that occurs during surgery and resolves spontaneously over a few days.

The most common causes of postoperative fever are often summarized for medical students by a mnemonic beginning with the letter W. The classic list consists of five W's – Wind, Water, Wound, Walking, and Wonder Drugs, but two other causes should also be considered – Wing/Waterway and (W)abscess.

Puerperal fever: Fever that lasts for more than 24 hours within the first 10 days after a woman has had a baby. Puerperal fever is due to an infection, most often of the placental site within the uterus. If the infection involves the bloodstream, it constitutes puerperal sepsis.

Pneumonia is an infection that inflames your lungs' air sacs (alveoli). The air sacs may fill up with fluid or pus, causing symptoms such as a cough, fever, chills and trouble breathing.

Atelectasis, the collapse of part or all of a lung, is caused by a blockage of the air passages (bronchus or bronchioles) or by pressure on the lung. Risk factors for atelectasis include anesthesia, prolonged bed rest with few changes in position, shallow breathing and underlying lung disease.

The two entities are often confused as they have overlapping imaging appearances and may coexist. Atelectasis represents incomplete expansion of the lung parenchyma, with associated loss of volume –whereas pneumonia is an infection of the parenchyma and not typically associated with volume loss.