CT Lung Infections - Video Lesson

Hey everybody, welcome back. This lesson is about lung infections that we can see in CT imaging. We need to start with an important term. The medical term for most lung infections is simply pneumonia. Pneumonia describes the infection and proliferation of microorganisms within the parenchyma of the lungs, leading to inflammation and filling of the alveolar spaces with fluid, pus, and cellular debris. Essentially, pneumonia is an infection of the lungs that we can see in radiography and CT imaging because it produces hyperdense inflammatory changes in the lung tissue. Sometimes those changes are called consolidations or infiltrates. There are several ways that we can classify pneumonia. Pneumonia can be classified by the infective agent. There are bacterial pneumonias, fungal pneumonias, and viral pneumonias. Pneumonia can also be classified by the mode of acquisition. There are community acquired pneumonias, hospital acquired pneumonias, ventilator associated pneumonias, and aspiration pneumonias.