Talk:Collapsed lung (disambiguation)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. The numbers provided here indicate that pneumothorax is the primary meaning of Collapsed lung. The arrangement of DAB pages and links in Wikipedia is just a convenience for the reader to get more quickly to the target they are most likely to be looking for. EdJohnston (talk) 16:35, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

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Collapsed lung → Collapsed lung (disambiguation) – Of the three titles on this page, I would contend that the one people think of when they hear the phrase "collapsed lung" is Pneumothorax, the condition associated with a traumatic lung collapse due to an accident wherein the lung is punctured. The second, less prominent medical meaning, and the relatively little-known band, could even be addressed sufficiently in a redirect hatnote. However, with three topics, it is fair to keep the disambiguation page at a (disambiguation) title. Relisted. bd2412 T 17:54, 8 February 2014 (UTC) bd2412 T 17:45, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

• Strong support per nom. Red Slash 03:09, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree that the band is not a significant contender. Rather than relying on the nominator's assertion about the medical terms, I looked for some evidence of usage. A Google Books search gave these results:

1. "collapsed lung" atelectasis -wikipedia 5,990 results
2. "collapsed lung" pneumothorax -wikipedia 14,200 results

I don't think that a margin of 2.4:1 meets the test in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC that it should be "much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term."

Our readers may use these medical articles for critical information. When the term "collapsed lung" has two meanings of relatively similar significance, it is best to direct them to a disambiguation page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:13, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

The focus of your search misunderstands Google Books results. I get 44,000 hits for "collapsed lung", most of which mention neither atelectasis nor pneumothorax, but are along the lines of "Wein had a broken rib, a collapsed lung, and a broken arm", Jim Dwyer, ‎Kevin Flynn, 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (2011), p. 192; "He was rushed to hospital in London, suffering from a collapsed lung, and immediately had a double operation to remove the tube and drain the lung", Donald Sturrock, Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (2010), p. 374; "I had a collapsed lung, and a broken toe, but other than that, I escaped relatively unhurt", Stephan A. Miller, The World's Most Complete Guide to Saving Gas (and Money) (2008), p. 79. People don't need disambiguation when the source is telling them that it's atelectasis or pneumothorax, they need disambiguation when the source is telling them that it's a "collapsed lung" with no further information. In those cases, the answer is far more likely to be the kind of collapsed lung typically caused by trauma, and requiring readers in an emergency situation to possibly spend time looking at the wrong article to figure that out can literally cost lives. bd2412 T 13:31, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

No, my search does not misunderstand the results. I too could have searched for "collapsed lung", but without some evidence of how that term is being used in each case, it would be pointless. You choose to assume that the results you cite refer to pneumothorax, but you offer no evidence for that assumption. That's circular logic.

That's why I set out to look for instances of the popular term when used in turn with each of the medical terms, because their usage together has a much higher probability of indicating the intended meaning of the popular term. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Good, I like a spirited debate, it helps us get to the truth. Contextually, the citations I have provided indicate a collapsed lung occurring due to trauma - having a "broken rib", being "rushed to the hospital", also having a "broken toe" but having "escaped unhurt". However, here are some more examples spanning a good length of time, which expressly refer to collapsed lungs cause by wounds, punctures, or other injury:

• 1838: "After a few days, the wound in the collapsed lung is closed by the adhesive inflammation, so that air no longer passes out of it". Samuel Cooper, A Dictionary of Practical Surgery: Comprehending All the Most Interesting Improvements, p. 489.
• 1875: "the lung will collapse if the chest be punctured at or very near the free margin of the lobes... This suggests a method of reinflating the collapsed lung, if thought desirable, in similar cases in the human subject". Joseph K. Barnes, ‎Joseph Janvier Woodward, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861-65), p. 632.
• 1951: "$15,000; punctured and partially collapsed lung, with other injuries". Robert C. Schenck, American Law Reports Annotated, p. 291.
• 1999: "Intrapleural pressure increases, producing a pneumothorax (accumulation of air in the pleural cavity) and a collapsed lung". Athletic Training and Sports Medicine, p. 356.
• 2003: "Complications of this procedure include collapsed lung, seen in 10 to 15 percent of biopsy patients, when air leaks from the lung into the chest cavity at the site of the needle puncture, collapsing the lung". Sandra A. McLanahan, ‎David J. McLanahan, Surgery and Its Alternatives: How to Make the Right Choices for Your Health, p. 236.
• 2008, "A common cause of a collapsed lung is the rupture of a small balloonlike weakened area on the lung's surface (called a bleb)", Neil Shulman, ‎Jack Birge, M.D., ‎Joon Ahn, Your Body's Red Light Warning Signals: Medical Tips That May Save Your Life, p. 96.
• 2011, "A hole in the chest can lead to a collapsed lung". Rod Brouhard, Life's Little Emergencies: A Handbook for Active Independent Seniors and Caregivers, p. 107.

I can provide thousands more if needed, but even with biased search terms, you yourself came up with nearly three times as many hits for the primary topic as for the next highest usage, a comfortable demonstration that pneumothorax is far more likely than all other topics combined to be the subject at issue. In fact (perhaps I should have pointed to this first), a regular Google search yields abundant evidence that medical encyclopedias and medical professionals generally consider pneumothorax to be the primary topic of the phrase "collapsed lung".

I think it is also important to remember that disambiguation pages are never an end in and of themselves; they are purely a navigational device, and one that is wholly unnecessary where this navigational assistance can be accomplished in a hatnote (see WP:TWODABS). Is there any policy that says that we can't reasonably accomplish the navigational function in this case, with a hatnote saying "for collapse of the air-containing sacs of the lung, see Atelectasis; for the British 1990s hip-hop band, see Collapsed Lung (band)"? bd2412 T 03:20, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

• Support move per User:Red Slash. The most likely scenario I can see for someone looking up the meaning of collapsed lung is getting a diagnoses, which for Pneumothorax happens to about 2 out of every 10,000 people per year in the UK,[1] (probably a similar ratio in other countries) but for Atelectasis infrequently enough that I could find no such annual statistics. What I did find is that Pneumothorax (collapse of the lung) can in rare cases cause Atelectasis (collapse of the alveoli), so the initial lay diagnosis of a collapsed lung is likely to be Pneumothorax either way.[2] [3] The next most likely scenario for someone looking up collapsed lung is from just hearing about one on the news or in a book or movie, which is more likely to mean the dramatic and newsmaking kind of collapsed lung described by Pneumothorax. Looking at the numbers in the comments above, Pneumothorax numerically more than meets the definition of being "more likely than all the other topics combined" to be the topic combined, by more than a two to one margin over all other topics combined. I'm sure if you added up page views for all other topics, they'd still be less than page views for Pneumothorax. - WPGA2345 - ☛ 04:23, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
• Unsure. Wikipedia does not give medical advice. But just to contradict that, I think it's important that we try to give the best advice that we can. The current situation is not too bad, and it has just taught me something. But many of my first aid instructors (and I've been doing the revision course every three years for more than forty years now) have confused collapsed lung with flail chest, which from a first aid perspective may not be too bad either... Andrewa (talk) 09:12, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
  • @Andrewa, have they confused the name of the condition, or the condition itself (i.e., like confusing a really bad headache for a stroke, or mistaking acid reflux for a heart attack)? I asked my doctor about this, and he told me that "collapsed lung" refers only to pneumothorax (collapse of the lung), which is the term for any collapse of the lung, while atelectasis only means collapsed alveoli, but not necessarily a collapsed lung. The latter is sometimes confused for the formed because, as noted above, atelectasis can lead to pneumothorax. If conditions like flail chest are mistaken for a collapsed lung, it is probably wise to discuss these in the pneumothorax article, but it would not be prudent, for example, to make the base page name heart attack a disambiguation page, and list acid reflux as one possible meaning. bd2412 T 15:14, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
    • Hmmm... the new information to which I referred was that collapsed lung could mean atelectasis as distinct from pneumothorax (as I had always used the term), and now you seem to be questioning this. We need to check sources obviously. But I'm not quite sure what the distinction is you're trying to make between the name and the condition. The confusion is that flail chest can often lead quite quickly to collapsed lung, to the point that some experienced first aiders who have dealt particularly with injuries from front-end collisions in older cars (before collapsing steering columns) seem to use the terms interchangeably. Andrewa (talk) 20:30, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
      • I am not disputing that some sources will equate other conditions with "collapsed lung" (just as some will speak of them as distinct conditions) or that some people will refer to an injury closely associated with a collapsed lung by that term, even if the lung itself has not actually experienced a collapse. I suppose it is prudent to treat an accident victim with a broken and detached rib as though they have had a lung collapse, just in case they do. The key question here, however, is what does "collapsed lung" primarily mean, as opposed to what is it ever used to mean. If a novelist or a newspaper report or an accident report describes someone having a collapsed lung, what does that most likely mean? bd2412 T 20:40, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
        • No. The key question is, is there a primary topic at all? Andrewa (talk) 01:21, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose (change from unsure above). The DAB should stay at collapsed lung. The above seems to confuse many issues, but the guideline is clear, and we are ill-advised to depart from it in an attempt to provide a substitute for medical advice. Andrewa (talk) 01:21, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
• Support. 2.4:1 is a ratio of much more, and it appears that the actual ratio of uses for the traumatic injury is even higher. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:24, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Somehow, this request has delved into issues regarding which medical diagnosis is more common. I agree with Andrewa that such a question is not really within the competence of WP:RM. I prefer that the current form of the disambiguation page be preserved, as I think it inappropriate to presume for what specific topic readers might be searching on so fine a point of medical distinction. Xoloz (talk) 03:13, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

  The issue of which topic is most likely sought by the reader searching on the topic is exactly the competence of WP:RM. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:05, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

  Normally, yes. However, the argument that Andrewa and I are making is that such competence ought not to extend to fine points of medical distinction, as Wikipedia does not (and should not) offer medical advice. Xoloz (talk) 20:09, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

  It is true that I may have gone a bit too far into the weeds in terms of the medical distinction. In fact, I think the more important thing from an overall disambiguation analysis (and something that I have neglected to bring up) as that the proposed target is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. Specifically, in the last 90 days, about 10,000 people have looked at "collapsed lung", while over 211,000 have looked at "Pneumothorax", compared to 107615 looking at "Atelectasis" (which is also less likely to be called "collapsed lung"), and about 2,200 have looked at the band. In this evaluation, the band is a non-entity, and what we have is a virtual WP:TWODABS, with about a 2/3 ration in favor of the article that is also more commonly associated with the name. bd2412 T 20:21, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

• Support. From the source evidence presented by BD2412 and WPGA2345, it seems clear that the primary topic of the term "collapsed lung" is the topic we discuss here. Even the very conservative estimate of 2.4:1 shows it to be the clear primary topic. As JHunterJ, it appears the actual ratio is much higher than that when you factor in sources for the subject that don't use the medical term that Wikipedia happens to use as the article title.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:48, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.