Clinical Protip

When it’s oh-dawn-thirty and your patient has oh-my-God respiratory distress that woke him up from a sound sleep and now he can’t breathe unless he’s sitting up and he can’t get enough air in his lungs and he’s so combative from hypoxia you can’t even manage to keep a non-rebreather on him and he’s tachycardic and extremely diaphoretic and oh-my-God hypertensive…

… it’s likely acute pulmonary edema, not asthma, no matter how wheezy they sound.

Put away the albuterol and start liberally fogging the nitro to them, and if they’re still alert enough to respond to coaching, CPAP.