• This is a common presenting symptoms to ED and as usual patients can vary from the very well to the extremely sick. You need to be able to formulate a differential diagnosis and consider all the more worrying causes of shortness of breath, be they cardiac, respiratory or other….
• Below are two SEMEP (Southampton Emergency Medical Education Project) videos on shortness of breath and asthma

Shortness of Breath from SEMEP on Vimeo.

Asthma from SEMEP on Vimeo.

COPD

Community Acquired Pneumonia

Useful links to other resources

• For you keen beans, why not check out our Respiratory eLearning page or watch a video about chest drain insertion 
• BMJ Learning
  • Management of acute asthma in children, 
  • Acute asthma: assessment and management,
  • Community acquired pneumonia: diagnosis and management,
  • COPD: diagnosis and management of exacerbations,
  •  Spontaneous pneumothorax: assessment and management
• Doctors.net.uk I can’t breath doctor