When your bronchitis is urgent enough to require you visiting an urgent care doctor?

Coughing always has a purpose, whether it occurs voluntarily or involuntarily. It’s a natural reflex against the things that sometimes block our breathing passage, whether it be flem, food and some foreign object (sometimes our own spit). Coughing requires a lot of air, both flowing in and flowing out. It’s when you can’t cough that you should really be worried! 

But constant, violent exhalations of air can be troubling for people if it lasts for weeks. While everyone coughs, there are certain kinds of cough that should spur alarm. If you’re concerned, visit an urgent care clinic internist for an examination and some cough treatment medication.

But the quickest way to determining the seriousness of your cough is by looking at the duration of it. The American College of Chest Physicians break down coughs into three categories based on how long it lasts:

v  Acute Cough: lasts 3 weeks or less

v  Subacute Cough: lasts from 3-8 weeks

v  Chronic Cough: lasts longer than 2 months

What’s a little crazy about these categories is that the most minor cough, an acute one, can last for up to three weeks. Most of us would lose it after one week. They do note that these acute coughs usually calm down after the first week, and are usually the cause of the common cold. Thus if you’ve had a regular cough (absent of blood or other troubling substances) for more than a week you may take comfort in knowing that you have two more weeks before it’s considered serious, but could take even more comfort by visiting your primary care doctor and getting some cough reliever medication.

If your cough is lasting into the subacute category, the seriousness of it depends on how violent the coughing. You may have pertussis, or, the whooping cough, also nicknamed the 100 days cough as it can last for about as long. This is a bacterial infection that may go away on its own, but antibiotics are incredibly effective.

People with chronic cough suffer from more than a bacterial infection or the common cold. For example lifestyle conditions can cause chronic cough, especially in people who smoke. It also typically signals a condition that requires a long term treatment plan, for example people who have asthma or post navel drip may go in and out of treatment for coughing for most of their life. Figuring out the source of this cough is key to its treatment.

If you think it’s time to visit an urgent care doctor NYC to get bronchitis treatment in NYC, visit the clinic situated just blocks from a slew of subway lines: the B,F,D,M,S,4,5,6, and 7. It’s almost impossible not to get to. And you don’t have to wait days to get in to see a doctor. You can walk in and wait no more than 25 minutes or you can make a same day appointment by visiting their website Urgent Care NYC.

If your cough feels serious to you, or if you don’t want to wait 3 weeks before it’s deemed serious, get help today.