Wheezes (high-pitched) are abnormal lung sounds that present as musical, whistling sounds. This sound tends to be noted on expiration where it is the loudest, but it can be heard on both inspiration and expiration.
However, before we jump right into identifying wheezes, 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.
Wheezes (High-Pitched) Lung Sound Nursing Review
Timing: Occurs mainly on expiration where it is the loudest, but can also be noted on inspiration and expiration
Pitch: high-pitched
Continuous
Location: throughout various parts of the respiratory system
Defining characteristics: squeaky, musical whistling that can sometimes even be heard without a stethoscope like in cases of an asthma attack, but the sound isn’t mainly auscultated from the throat area (this is associated with stridor).
Listen to an Example of Wheezing
Causes of Wheezes?
This sound is occurring because airways have narrowed. Therefore, when air is trying to go through these narrowed airways it creates a squeaky musical sound.
It can occur with asthma, COPD, and lung infections that cause swelling of the airways like with viral respiratory infections.
Now test your knowledge on identifying this lung sound with this wheezes quiz.
Nurse Sarah’s Notes and Merch
Just released is “ABG Interpretation Notes, Mnemonics, and Workbook by Nurse Sarah“. These notes contain 64 pages of Nurse Sarah’s illustrated, fun notes with mnemonics, and worksheets that include over 90 ABG practice problems and 60 test review questions covering ABG concepts.
You can get an eBook version here or a physical copy of the book here.
References:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, February 28). Asthma. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/default.htm
Patel PH, Mirabile VS, Sharma S. Wheezing. [Updated 2022 Aug 28]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2023 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482454/