aias there something they can do for infiltration of the lungs?

Question

IS there

Answer 1

Hi. I am sorry to read about your Mom. As the other person said, treatment does depend on the cause of the infiltrate. Antibiotics for bacterial pneumonias, antivirals for viral pneumonias, etc. Since you're not saying, I'm assuming that maybe the doctors do not know?? For how long has your Mom been sick? Was it a sudden thing, or has she been fighting illness for a long time?

My little girl was healthy at birth but got sick when she was a little baby, and she started breathing faster and faster and harder and harder needing more and more oxygen until she had to eventually be put on the ventilator. Her x-rays were clear for a while but eventually showed infiltrates although Infectious Disease doctors assured everyone that it was not infection. They did all sorts of cultures and tests and could not find any cause. Even after being on the vent, she continued to get worse for a while, and carbon dioxide levels in her blood kept getting higher and higher, and they kept turning the settings on the vent up trying to find a setting that would work. After a few days of being like that, a pulmonologist and an intensive care doctor came in and talked with me, told me that she was beyond respiratory distress, that this was rather severe respiratory failure. They would even possibly consider her for ECMO (heart-lung machine) to let her lungs rest and heal, but they didn't know if even that could help her. They did a CT, results were very bad. Her lungs at that point had so much edema that they looked more like liver than lungs. The doctors requested permission from me to do a biopsy as her only hope would be to find a cause for her lung disease so they would know how to treat it or if survival was even possible. The biopsy came back inconclusive for a lot of the illnesses they were testing for. The weird thing for us was that my baby went into the biopsy dying (they didn't know if she could even survive the procedure), and she came out doing much better. She got off the ventilator a few weeks later when one of the doctors figured out that the surgeon had administered high doses of steroids during the surgery to stabilize her. It had worked then, so they gave her more, and she started doing better. They also treated her with Zithromax 3 days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) for several months to help get rid of some of the inflammation (not used in this case as an antibiotic). She is still on the steroids and oxygen 11 months later, but she is alive, growing, and doing quite well. We really feel so fortunate that we will get to celebrate her first birthday in a few weeks.

What my daughter has is called interstitial lung disease, the type being diffuse alveolar damage (DAD). The doctors don't really tell me much (and I'm a nurse!), but I've read about it, and I guess it is what they find when someone has Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome or Acute Interstial Pneumonia. In my daughter's case, high doses of steroids (Decadron IV, Solu-medrol IV, and eventually prednisolone syrup orally) and the Zithromax really helped.

Again, I am so sorry about your Mom. I hope they find something to help her soon. Take care.

Answer 2

it depends what the infiltrate is. Usually it's an infection, pneumonia, a round of antibiotics works well. The infiltrate could be cancer, then you need to talk to an oncologist. The infiltrate could be a piece of food. Some people loose their gag or have problems and food goes down the wrong way, antibiotics. Some STDS go in the lungs, chlamydia is an example, antibiotics work well