Stridor is an abnormal lung sound that presents as a squawking or screeching sound. It occurs during inspiration or expiration.
However, before we jump right into identifying stridor, 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.
Stridor Lung Sound Nursing Review
Timing: inspiratory or expiratory
Pitch: high-pitched
Continuous
Location: upper respiratory system
Defining characteristics: screeching/squawking noise from the throat area
Listen to an Example of Stridor
Causes of Stridor?
This sound can be life-threatening and require immediate treatment depending on the severity of the stridor and its cause.
Stridor is occurring because there is narrowing of the larynx and trachea due to swelling from an infection, blockage from an object etc. In the end, it can lead to a completely blocked airway.
For example, stridor can be heard in cases of epiglottis or croup (you may hear it described as a “barking” cough) that affects the pediatric population.
The epiglottis is a structure found in the throat in front of the larynx. This structure can become inflamed due to bacterial infections like Haemophilus influenzae type B, or in cases of anaphylaxis and from a foreign object blocking the airway.
Now test your knowledge with this lung sound stridor quiz.
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References:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, August 18). Pinkbook: Haemophilus influenzae (Hib). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/hib.html
Zimmerman B, Williams D. Lung Sounds. [Updated 2022 Aug 29]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53