According to the theory of Chinese medicine, heavy accumulation of wind-heat invades the lungs. They are already affected by endogenous heat. Both exogenous and endogenous evils act on the lungs and render them incapable of keep qi pure and descendant; in turn, heat accumulates and blood stagnates, and lung abscess ensues. Clinically, there are three main syndrome differentiations for  lung abscess.
1. Wind-warm syndrome:
A case of wind-warm syndrome may develop into lung abscess in cases of erroneous treatment. Although the wind-warm syndrome also presents such symptoms as fever, cough, restlessness, thirst, chest pain and dyspnea, it can be distinguished from lung abscess by the absence of high fever, chills and discharge of profuse, foul and purulent sputum.

2. Lung abscess and pulmonary flaccidity-syndrome:
Lung abscess usually manifests itself as a sthenia-syndrome with a sudden onset and a short duration. Pulmonary flaccidity-syndrome is a disorder which involves atrophy of the lung lobe due to exhaustion of qi and yin and damage as asthenic heat, or asthenia-cold of lung-qi which is characterized by an insidious onset and a prolonged duration and manifests itself as an asthenia-syndrome. However, a longstanding case of lung abscess, when its treatment is delayed or erroneous, may develop into pulmonary flaccidity-syndrome because of consumption of lung-yin by phlegm-heat.

3. Identification of the stages of the disorder:
Lung abscess may be grouped under various stages according to its progress: the early stage, the stage of abscess formation, the stage of abscess rupture and the convalescence stage.

In TCM, a disease or a symptom might be caused by one pathogenic factor, even two or three pathogenic factors. When diagnosing a disease or a symptom, TCM doctors must follow the principle of "Syndrome Dfferentiation", and then "Suit the Remedy to the Case". In order to gain a more definite and valuable diagnosis, it's important and necessary for the doctor to learn the detailed health information of the patient, including his/her disease duration, age, sex, height, weight, family history, urine, stool, diet, sleep, sweat, energy, mood (emotion), as well as the tongue conditions and the palm conditions, etc. If you would want our expert to create a TCM diagnosis, you're welcome to contact us.