Breeze The answer is yes, but not all respiratory diseases will cause back pain. When you have back pain, you don’t have to think about serious problems such as pneumonia and lung cancer first.
Over the years I have been working in the respiratory clinic, I have encountered many patients who mistook back pain caused by respiratory problems as muscle strains. Last month, there was a 32-year-old programmer who had been working on a project for more than half a month. He had a bad cold that lasted a week and didn't get better. Then his cough became more and more severe and his right back hurt. He thought it was a strained muscle from sitting at the desk for a long time, so he applied plaster for three days but it didn't heal. Later, a CT scan revealed that it was pneumonia in the right lower lung. The lesion was just next to the pleura on the posterior wall. The inflammation repeatedly stimulated the pain nerves on the pleura. When coughing stretched the pleura, the pain was severe. After five days of anti-inflammatory treatment, the back pain disappeared along with the cough.
In addition to inflammation directly irritating nerves, there is also a more common type of back pain, which is purely caused by coughing up. Not long ago, there was an aunt in her sixties who coughed for almost half a month after having the flu. When she came, she said her back hurt so much that she had to struggle to lift her arms to put on a sweater. A lung check revealed no problems at all, but she coughed too frequently and the intercostal muscles and diaphragm in her back were repeatedly contracted and strained. She was prescribed cough medicine and took it for three days, and most of the pain was relieved.
Of course, there is no need to be overly nervous. Most mild respiratory problems will not affect your back at all. Upper respiratory tract infections such as the common cold and acute pharyngitis usually focus on the throat and nasal cavity. They may cause headaches and sore throats at most, but rarely affect the back area.
Nowadays, many opinions on the Internet directly equate back pain with lung cancer. In fact, this view is quite one-sided. Only when lung cancer progresses to invade the posterior wall pleura or compress the nerve plexus of the posterior mediastinum will it cause persistent back pain. Early-stage lung cancer has almost no specific symptoms. If you have high-risk factors such as smoking and family history of lung cancer, regular low-dose CT scans are enough. Don’t scare yourself when you have back pain.
Here’s a simple way to tell the difference: if your back pain is significantly aggravated by deep breathing and coughing, it is most likely related to respiratory problems. Go and take a X-ray as soon as possible to check.； If the pain is related to posture and movement, and it hurts after sitting at the desk for a long time, but is relieved by stretching and moving a few times, then it is probably muscle strain, and moving more is better than anything else.
