Diagnosaurus
Acute respiratory failure
DDx
Airway disorders
- Asthma
- COPD exacerbation
- Airway obstruction
- Left ventricular dysfunction
- Mitral regurgitation or stenosis
- Volume overload states
- Acute respiratory distress syndrome
- Re-expansion
- Pneumonia or aspiration pneumonitis
- Interstitial lung disease
- Lung contusion
- Pulmonary thromboembolism
- Flail chest
- Pneumothorax
- Pleural effusion
- Massive ascites
- Guillain-Barré syndrome
- Myasthenia gravis
- Poliomyelitis
- Botulism
- Organophosphates or aminoglycosides
- Spinal cord injury
- Phrenic nerve injury or dysfunction
- Hypokalemia, hypophosphatemia
- Myxedema
- Drugs: sedative, hypnotic, opioid, anesthetics
- Brainstem disorder
- Intracranial hypertension
- CNS infections
- Fever, infection, seizures, drugs
There's more to see -- the rest of this topic is available only to subscribers.
Last updated: December 1, 2014
Citation
Zeiger, Roni F.. "Acute Respiratory Failure." Diagnosaurus, 4th ed., McGraw-Hill Education, 2014. Emergency Central, emergency.unboundmedicine.com/emergency/view/Diagnosaurus/114774/all/Acute_respiratory_failure.
Zeiger RFR. Acute respiratory failure. Diagnosaurus. McGraw-Hill Education; 2014. https://emergency.unboundmedicine.com/emergency/view/Diagnosaurus/114774/all/Acute_respiratory_failure. Accessed October 31, 2025.
Zeiger, R. F. (2014). Acute respiratory failure. In Diagnosaurus (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. https://emergency.unboundmedicine.com/emergency/view/Diagnosaurus/114774/all/Acute_respiratory_failure
Zeiger RFR. Acute Respiratory Failure [Internet]. In: Diagnosaurus. McGraw-Hill Education; 2014. [cited 2025 October 31]. Available from: https://emergency.unboundmedicine.com/emergency/view/Diagnosaurus/114774/all/Acute_respiratory_failure.
* Article titles in AMA citation format should be in sentence-case
TY - ELEC
T1 - Acute respiratory failure
ID - 114774
A1 - Zeiger,Roni F,
Y1 - 2014/12/01/
BT - Diagnosaurus
UR - https://emergency.unboundmedicine.com/emergency/view/Diagnosaurus/114774/all/Acute_respiratory_failure
PB - McGraw-Hill Education
ET - 4
DB - Emergency Central
DP - Unbound Medicine
ER -
