Sports for pleurisy

As a general rule, patients suffering from pleurisy should not exercise until the cause of the disease is known. If this is pleurisy from the infectious forms, it is better to take it easy at first. The body needs energy in order to successfully fight an infection, so one should not put additional strain on the body during an acute infection.

The most sensible thing to do is to listen to your own body feeling and not to put yourself under full strain directly after the illness, but rather to slowly increase the training to the level of before the illness. With the non-infectious form of pleural disease, it is important to exercise to the extent that it is beneficial to health. In other words, light endurance training instead of strength training. Here too, of course, one must learn to pay attention to and react to the signs of one’s body. If in doubt, one should not do very strenuous sports during the acute illness and should start again slowly after the illness.

Danger

The danger of pleurisy is to carry it away. This can lead to adhesions of the pleura (pleura), thus restricting the mobility of the lungs. A further danger is that a pleural effusion can become so large that the lung volume is reduced, resulting in massive breathing difficulties. Therefore, if pleurisy is suspected, a doctor should be consulted as soon as possible.

Prognosis

As a rule, pleurisy without complications heals easily and completely.If the cause of pleurisy is another disease, the prognosis depends on the cure of this disease. In some cases, pleurisy heals with scarring, so that smaller scar strands in the pleural space can lead to adhesions and pain. These can usually be easily severed surgically. Although the prognosis of an untreated pleurisy due to tuberculosis is very rare today, it can lead to death, as can an untreated purulent inflammation of the pleura.