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Dyspnea is a very common symptom reported by many patients with cardiac, pulmonary, and neuromuscular diseases. To determine whether different disease states and medical conditions produce different types of dyspnea sensations, these investigators studied 53 patients with congestive heart failure, various pulmonary diseases, pregnancy, or neuromuscular and chest-wall diseases. Patients were asked to define their dyspnea using any of 19 descriptions provided on a questionnaire.
Neuromuscular and chest-wall diseases were associated with reported "shallow breathing," congestive heart failure with "smothering or suffocating," and asthma with "tightness or constriction" and difficulty exhaling. In contrast, normal subjects described their breathi…