Clinical features of chronic bronchitis

Patients with chronic obstructive airways disease may manifest features anywhere along the spectrum between being a pink puffer and a blue bloater. However, patients with chronic bronchitis may tend more towards the features of a blue bloater.

Clinical features of blue bloaters include:

• relatively mild dyspnoea
• loose cough and sputum - mucoid or mucopurulent
• frequent infective exacerbations
• often oedematous and readily lapse into right congestive heart failure
• palpation reveals a hyperinflated chest with reduced expansion
• percussion reveals increased resonance
• breath sounds are reduced with end-expiratory high or low pitched wheezes and early inspiratory crackles.