I'm a 4th year med student applying to IM and taking a radiology course right now. Can someone explain to me the difference between 'subsegmental atelectasis' and 'compressive atelectasis'?

I want to go into pulm/crit care eventually and on my ICU rotation a few months ago I was looking at CXRs daily and had no clue what I was doing, so I decided to take this course and really want to master radiology as best as I can.

I'm reading "Learning Radiology" by William Herring right now and I'm confused by something I read in chapter 7 on atelectasis.

In the discussion on types of atelectasis, he says there is subsegmental atelectasis, which "occurs mostly in patients who are “splinting” (i.e., not taking a deep breath), such as postoperative patients or patients with pleuritic chest pain"

Later on he says there's another type of atelectasis called compressive atelectasis, which is due to "poor inspiratory effort in which there is passive atelectasis of the lung at the bases"

How are these two things different?

submitted by /u/21_Points
[link] [comments]

source https://www.reddit.com/r/Radiology/comments/k2h0ly/im_a_4th_year_med_student_applying_to_im_and/