spurious and pseudo hemoptysis

Spurious hemoptysis

Spurious hemoptysis means there is real blood in the sputum, but it comes from the upper respiratory tract (above the larynx), such as from an upper‑airway infection, epistaxis, or gingival bleeding, rather than from the lungs or bronchi.

The blood is genuinely present under the microscope, but the source is not the lower respiratory tract (below the glottis).

Pseudo‑hemoptysis

Pseudo‑hemoptysis (or pseudohemoptysis) refers to blood‑like sputum that may look like blood but sometimes does not actually contain blood cells; for example, red pigment (prodigiosin) from Serratia marcescens infection can stain sputum red without true bleeding.

It can also include situations where blood is aspirated from the upper aerodigestive or gastrointestinal tract (e.g., hematemesis aspirated into the lungs) and then expectorated, so the bleeding source is extrapulmonary