What is chronic obstructive pulmona...

What is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease?

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (or COPD) is a lung disease. It stiffens the large and small airways of your lung COPD includes pair main illnesses, chronic bronchitis and emphysema (say: em-fi-see-ma). There is no healing for COPD.

Your lung have pair main parts: (1) air sacs and (2) airways that are called bronchial tubes. When you breathe in within your windpipe, the air actuates through your bronchial tubes into your air sacs. From these sacs, oxygen goe into your descendants and carbon dioxide moves public of your blood.

If you have chronic bronchitis, the lining of your bronchial tubes procures irritated and makes a fate of mucus. This mucus stiffens your tubes. If you have braceed airways, it is hard to breathe. If you have emphysema, your air sacs are damaged, and the smallest bronchial tubes collapse. This makes it hard for you to master oxygen into your blood and carbon dioxide public of your blood.

Who achieves COPD?

About 14 million nation in the United States have COPD The disease unravels over many years. It usually is caused by means of cigarette smoking. The best way to withhold COPD from getting worse is to quit smoking.

to what degree do I know I have COPD?

The principally common signs of COPD are chronic coughing and shortness of breath. If you are a smoker who cough and you are short of breath onward most days, you might have COPD

Your doctor might give you a experiment to see how well your lung are working. In this ordeal you take deep breaths, then calamity into a machine. The machine measures to what degree deeply you can breathe and for what reason fast you can move air in and not at home of your lungs. You also might have a chest x-ray. The x-ray can exhibit to if you have signs of COPD

to what degree is COPD treated?

If you have COPD the greatest in quantity important thing you can do is stop smoking. Quitting can stop or at least dull the damage to your lung Talk to your doctor about in what manner to stop smoking. If you quit smoking promptly you have a better chance of living longer and having a religious quality of life.

Your doctor also might want you to take an medicines to make you be perceived better and breathe more easily. a certain quantity of of these medicines are the kind that you breathe in with an inhaler. You also might ne to take a kind of steroid and antibiotics if you realize a lung infection.

a certain number of people with advanced COPD ne to use oxygen therapy. The oxygen is breathed in between the walls of tubes that you put in your nose or between the sides of a mask that goes across your mouth and nose.

Patients with true bad COPD might have to have surgery They might have a lung reduction operation or a lung transplant. These surgeries are usually done solitary in people who have not gotten better with the other treatments.

to what degree do I take inhaled medicines?

To take inhaled medicines, you can use a small handheld canister called an inhaler, or you can use a machine called a nebulizer. You can carry the handheld inhaler along with you. a certain quantity of people call this kind of inhaler a "puffer" You might use the inhaler several times a day.

A nebulizer machine deflects liquid medicine into a vapor that you breathe. This machine frequently is used to treat nation with very bad COPD. It also helps race who have trouble using handheld inhalers.

What besides can help?

If you have COPD you might be more likely to master colds and the flu. Because your heart can be strained, it will gain bigger. You might have high squeezing in the vessels that bring life-current to your lungs.

You should commit to memory a flu shot every year. You also should obtain a pneumonia shot. You are les likely to master sick with the flu or pneumonia if you have these bullets Lung rehabilitation and exercise programs also may be helpful.

COPYRIGHT 2004 American Academy of Family Physicians

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group