From Nostril to Alveolus: The Air’s Journey

CHART CLUE

At 45, Stina has a sudden right-sided chest pain that stabs with every inhalation and forces fast, shallow breaths; a chest film shows a small pleural effusionFluid accumulation between the layers of the pleura around the lungs., and it resolves on its own in two days. The line in her chart reads like a shrug: ‘Sharp chest pain that comes and goes? Probably a muscle strain.’ Recurrent, self-limited, one-sided pleuritic pain in a patient already carrying documented peritonitis and pericarditis.