What are the common symptoms of lung abscess?

1. Sudden chills, high fever, or chest pain.

2. Mild cough at the onset, with expectoration of a small amount of mucoid or mucopus sputum. Daily expectoration of a large amount of foul-smelling pus, ranging from 300 to 500ml, sometimes mixed with blood or moderate hemoptysis.

3. Improvement of toxic symptoms and decrease in body temperature after expectoration of a large amount of pus.

4. No abnormal signs if the lesion is small or located deep in the lung. When the lesion is large and surrounded by extensive inflammation, percussion may reveal dullness, breath sounds may be weakened upon auscultation, and wet rales may be heard. If the cavity is large and close to the chest wall, bronchial breath sounds may be audible. Patients with chronic lung abscess may have clubbing of the fingers.

5. In patients with chronic lung abscess, cough, expectoration, and recurrent hemoptysis may persist, accompanied by irregular fever, sweating, weight loss, and anemia.

6. Hematogenous lung abscess often presents with systemic sepsis symptoms such as chills and high fever caused by the primary lesion. After a few days to 2 weeks, cough and expectoration decrease, and hemoptysis becomes less.