Do You Cough Out Blood? Ignorance May Cost You Your Life

In our Indian subcontinent, innumerable persons of all age groups do suffer from cough at various stages of their lives. Sometimes frequency of cough suddenly increases with the onset of winter and dry cough gets converted into wetly one with white secretions.

- Dr KK Pandey

Sometime change of weather heralds the onset of episodes of incessant and devastating cough. People in our subcontinent try out all sorts of allopathic medicines as well as homemade concoctions. They do get a temporary relief, but complaint of cough never goes off completely, because our people do not concentrate on the causes of coughing. Our physicians too do not seem to have enough time to investigate in detail the causes of coughing. Recurrent episodes of even non-stop dry cough should be a cause for worry, let alone passage of blood during coughing. Coughing out blood poses a serious as well as a dangerous problem. The negligence in such a situation is tantamount to an open invitation to death. Always remember, one should take the problem of coughing-out of blood very seriously and promptly consult a thoracic surgeon, otherwise a precious human life may be lost due to ignorance.

Why does blood come out during coughing?

There are multiple reasons for passing out blood during coughing. In our country the most important cause is the tubercular infection. When a tubercular infection due to lack of proper care and treatment reaches a fulminant stage, a sufferer starts coughing out blood. Sometimes, bleeding happens to be so severe that a tubercular infected person dies instantaneously within hours, due to exsanguinations and flooding of opposite normal lung with blood.