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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Emphysema symptoms and preventive care and cure

At present, advice for primary prevention is limited to the admonition: "If you don't smoke, don't start, and if you do, stop as soon as possible." Detection of emphysema and chronic bronchitis is complicated by the insidious nature of these diseases. 

They may take a long time to produce symptoms, and by the time they do, much damage has been done. There are certain clues, however, that make the physician suspicious that a patient may be showing early signs of chronic bronchitis or emphysema. One is a history of chronic "cigarette cough," usually worse in the morning on arising and frequently productive of sputum. Another is a history of frequent respiratoryinfections which are severe and take long to resolve. 

There are other possible clues: on physical examination, the physician may detect some wheezing after forced expiration or may find an increase in chest diameter ("barrel chest"). Not everyone with such symptoms and signs necessarily has emphysema or chronic bronchitis, but the physician may suspect that this is the likely diagnosis if there is no past history of asthma, other lung or heart disease, and if there is a smoking history of ten or more years' duration.

 By making use of certain simple lung function tests (spirography), the physician can confirm the diagnosis. While chest x-rays may not reveal emphysema until the disease is well along, the routine yearly or semiannual physical checkup is the time for detection of symptoms and signs that indicate that emphysema may be present -and with early detection, appropriate measures can be taken to pre- vent worsening. All too often it is severe shortness of breath or severe respiratoryinfection that brings the emphysema patient to the doctor for the first time-at a point when much damage may already have been done.


 Are chronic bronchitis and emphysema different diseases? When lung tissue is examined under the micro- scope, a distinction can be made. But during life, the distinction is hazy be- cause the two problems so often co- exist. For this reason, they are frequently described together under the name of "chronic obstructive lung disease" (COLD) or "chronic obstructive pulmonary emphysema" (COPE). 

The word "obstructive," which appears in both names, refers to the changes that occur in the air passages (the bronchi and bronchioles) which conduct air to the lung areas where oxygen is ex- changed for carbon dioxide. The bronchi and bronchioles serve as a first line of defense against infection. They have special cells that destroy invading organisms