What You Should Know About Oral Care And Aspiration Pneumonia

Pneumonia essentially refers to breathing problems caused by the infections and subsequent swelling of the airways and lungs. The aspiration pneumonia generally advances when saliva, vomits, liquids, and food access the airways and into your lungs as opposed to going through the right channels to the stomach. Since a lot of micro-organisms do exist inside the mouth, oral care and aspiration pneumonia may easily develop.
As a result, flossing and brushing your mouth will aid in eliminating the micro-organisms from your mouth. In addition, oral care assists in preventing such bacteria from reaching the lungs. The bacteria are normally conveyed into your lungs when aspiration take with them materials like food and saliva. Nonetheless, proper mouth hygiene will aid in making the elements that reach the lungs to be less nasty. Also, pneumonic conditions caused by poor mouth hygiene will be avoided.
Usually, the mouth is often forgotten in healthcare. Normally, people wash hands and wear gloves to prevent spreading the harmful bacteria. However, the mouth is often gotten yet it is one that would result in bacteria pneumonic conditions. Basically, the mouth is a wide gateway to your body and germs love to hide in the gingival spaces between the gums and the teeth. If they park in those spaces for over 24 hours, they become calcified plaques, and bacteria love to stick on such plaques.
Basically, the sort of bacteria usually causing pneumonic conditions will depend on various factors. These include your health, instances of recent hospitalization, recent use of antibiotics, the environment you live in and a weak immune system. In addition, aspiration of alien materials can also arise from a number reasons. These include excessive alcohol use, coma, old age, as well as low levels of alertness caused by medicines, illnesses and so on.
Other factors that can increase the likelihood of developing aspirated pneumonia are for instance swallowing issues or even poor reflexes towards gagging. This is especially common in people who remain unconscious or are semi-conscious as a result of an injury to the brain or stroke. On the other hand, general anesthesia could raise the likelihood of this condition. The condition is evidenced by different symptoms. These are for example foul-smells, chest pains, coughing of dark or greenish sputum that also has blood or pus, breath shortness, fever and finally fatigue. Other symptoms may include swallowing difficulties, excessive sweating breath odor, as well as wheezing.
During the physical examination, the tests may reveal crackling sounds from the lungs, rapid pulse, decreased oxygen, and decreased mental awareness. Some of the tests used during the diagnosis are such as blood culture, arterial blood gas, chest x-ray, bronchoscopy, sputum culture, and swallowing tests.
The treatment of this pneumonic conditions, however, is pegged on the intensiveness of the condition. Some people can face hospitalization for treatment. Ventilator or breathing machines can be used in some occasion to support breathing. Also, antibiotics can be administered for treatment.
Oral care is, however, an important routine that need to be observed by patients. When properly done, development of aspiration pneumonia can be prevented. This is because proper oral hygiene helps to reduce the amount nasty bacteria from the mouth.
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Source: http://www.freearticlesbase.com/career/what-you-should-know-about-oral-care-and-aspiration-pneumonia/