[Patients with dyspnea in emergency admission]

Dyspnea is a common symptom in emergency medicine and represents a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. A multitude of differential diagnoses must be considered and checked but where there are indications of a life-threatening situation and also by rapidly reversible causes an (initial) treatment must be initiated without delay. Initially implemented should be those aspects relevant for an initial assessment and risk stratification which result from anamnestic details, clinical symptoms and immediately available screening tests. This article describes in detail the clinical and diagnostic instrumental armamentarium including implementation and interpretation. Also discussed are the relevance of individual methods in the respective clinical context and possible sources of error and limitations. A possible algorithm for the management of dyspnea in a clinical setting, from initial contact to admission or release, is presented graphically and textually.