Rhonchi are abnormal lung sounds that present as a snoring sound. This sound tends to be noted mainly on expiration, but it can be heard during inspiration as well.
However, before we jump right into identifying rhonchi, let’s go over the basics in helping you understand how to identify adventitious lung sounds.
What questions should you be asking yourself while auscultating adventitious lung sounds?
When you’re auscultating lungs sounds you want to tune your ears to take notice of the following things that will help you determine what type of abnormal sound you are hearing:
- Timing: are you hearing it mainly on inspiration or expiration or even both?
- Pitch: low or high pitch?
- Discontinuous or continuous? meaning are you able to distinguish the individual sounds that come in a series and are intermittent (discontinuous)? Or are they a continuous sound?
- Location? large airways (upper respiratory, trachea, large bronchi) vs. small airways (lower parts of the respiratory like the bronchioles or alveoli)
- Does it have defining auditory characteristics that are hard to ignore? for example, harsh-grating, squeaky musical whistling, snoring, or squawking etc.
Rhonchi Lung Sounds Nursing Review
Timing: Occurs mainly on expiration but could be heard along with inspiration
Pitch: Low-pitched and loud
Continuous
Location: large airways like trachea and bronchus
Defining characteristics: snoring or snorting sounds that will decrease or go away with coughing or suctioning
Listen to an Example of Rhonchi
Causes of Rhonchi
This sound occurs as air leaves the trachea and bronchus and hits secretions like mucus and fluid, creating a snoring like sound.
Conditions that can cause this are like bronchitis, pneumonia, and COPD.
As a side note: Some literature sources will call rhonchi a type of coarse crackle or wheeze known as a sonorous wheeze. Therefore, as you study keep this in mind and go by how your professor or facility categorizes rhonchi.
Test your knowledge on rhonchi by taking the rhonchi lung sound quiz.
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References
Kim, Y., Hyon, Y., Jung, S. S., Lee, S., Yoo, G., Chung, C., & Ha, T. (2021). Respiratory sound classification for crackles, wheezes, and rhonchi in the clinical field using deep learning. Scientific reports, 11(1), 17186. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-96724-78.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Bronchitis. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. Retrieved from https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/bronchitis