Pneumothorax

This air pushes on the outside of your lung and makes it collapse.

Pneumothorax. A pneumothorax occurs when air leaks into the space between your lung and chest wall. A collapsed lung can result in your chest feeling tight and achy and make it. This occurs when air is trapped in the space around the lungs. Pneumothorax is the medical term for a collapsed lung.

Pneumothorax happens when air gets into the space between the lung and the inner wall of the chest. It can cause pain and extreme worry and certain cases can be life threatening. Pneumothorax condition in which air accumulates in the pleural space causing it to expand and thus compress the underlying lung which may then collapse the pleural space is a cavity formed by the two pleural membranes that line the thoracic cavity and cover the lungs different classifications are used to describe the various types of pneumothoraxes though two major types commonly are. This is called a tension pneumothorax.

Webmd explains how a collapsed lung can happen in people who are otherwise healthy and in people. In a minority of cases a one way valve is formed by an area of damaged tissue and the amount of air in the space between chest wall and lungs increases. Symptoms typically include sudden onset of sharp one sided chest pain and shortness of breath.