Bronchospasm (Nursing)

00:01 Now what is a bronchospasm? This is what we're coming to, right? We did all that work on the anatomy so you can really understand what a bronchospasm is.

00:11 We've got three pictures here, the one farthest and closest to the word "what" is a normal airway.

00:19 So take a lookayay at that, you've got alveoli at the bottom, you've got smooth muscle wrapped around, those are the darker bands around the outside and then you see the airways really open.

00:29 Now the one in the middle kind of looks like some trouble.

00:33 Notice how that is thicker, right so the opening is smaller because that one is thicker.

00:40 Wow, the third one looks like real trouble.

00:44 It's all three of them have that smooth muscle around it but that third one ass significantly narrow airway and it looks like those bands around it are just squeezing it.

00:56 That's what a bronchospasm is.

00:59 It's a sudden tightening or construction of the smooth muscle of the walls of the bronchioles, it makes it very difficult for the person to breathe.

01:09 So looking at that picture, we know that if you think about smooth muscles being wrapped around the outside and it's also in the walls when it suddenly clamps down, what's happening to my finger, right? Blood supply is stuck at the tip of my finger.

01:25 Well if this were my airway, air would not be able to get down through my bronchioles to my alveoli.

01:33 So in a bronchospasm, this happens super quickly.

01:37 So it's a constriction and a tightening, it's the smooth muscle of the walls and the bronchioles and the external ones that are wrapped around it that makes it difficult for a person to breathe.

01:48 Now how I learned about bronchospasms was I watched a movie.

01:51 It's called "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle" - doesn't matter if you seen it or not but just know that in the end, someone tries to kill a woman by taking all her inhalers, all her medication and punching holes in them.

02:05 So I watched the whole movie, really sympathetic because I watched this person just crawl through the house and just make it to their inhaler that would save their life and nothing.

02:16 So I promise you, by the end of that scene, I was completely out of breath because I was sympathy bronchospasming with the actress, it was horrible.

02:28 So if you want to see a really Hollywood version of what a bronchospasm looks like, check that movie out.

02:33 But what's most important is you're recognising that this is an emergency for your patient or anyone experiencing it.