What are "bronchi", "bronchioles" and "bronchial tubes"?

What are "bronchi", "bronchioles" and "bronchial tubes"?

William Berger (Allergist and Immunologist) gives expert video advice on: What is "asthma"?; Can people die from asthma?; What causes asthma? and more...

Very often patients are told that they have bronchial asthma, bronchitis or chronic bronchitis. Very often these are different descriptions of the same problem. Asthma is a disease that affects the bronchi. The bronchi are the airways that lead into the lung. When you look at the lung it looks rather like an upside down tree. We have a trunk, which is the trachea, then large branches of that tree, which are bronchi, and then breaking into smaller and smaller branches are the bronchioles. If we know that asthma is a disease of the bronchi that affects the airways, bronchial asthma is a redundant term, so any thing that affects your air ways has being bronchial. If there is inflammation we use the word 'itis', like when tonsils are inflamed we call it tonsillitis, or when eyes are inflamed you have conjunctivitis, so if you have itis of your bronchi they call it bronchitis .Very often they are really talking about asthma.