COPD Treatment, Causes, Types, Symptoms, Medication And Facts

COPD – A progressive disease
If you’ve been suffering from cough lasting several weeks that is accompanied by other symptoms, it is possible that it is a condition called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Unlike common cough that goes away in a few days’ time, COPD has cough that brings up mucus. Even moderate physical activity results in shortness of breath. More importantly cough lasts at least a couple of months with intermittent severe bouts for over 2 successive years.
This prolonged cough varies in severity from time to time. Patients with COPD often experience bouts called flare-ups which are periods when all or many associated symptoms worsen. This is also referred to as COPD exacerbation. The two significant causes of COPD exacerbation are lung infections and air pollution. These periods may warrant immediate medical care to make adjustments to your medication schedule so that more serious breathing problems don’t present.

Stages of COPD
Based on several tests, your physician will decide if you suffer from COPD and how severe your individual case is. Since symptoms of COPD may be similar to asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis and some other illnesses, doctors rely on lung function tests and spirometry tests to conclusively determine COPD in a patient.
Lung function tests measure the size of your lungs and how well your lungs can deliver oxygen to your blood.
Spirometry is a short non-invasive breathing test that measures how much air you can breathe in and out and how fast in a single second. In medical terminology, it is called FEV1 and stands for forced expiratory volume in 1 second. Doctors use a percentage scale to assess lung health and deterioration. Spirometers are used to record patient FEV1s.
The progressive stages of COPD are referred to as mild stage, moderate stage, severe stage and end stage.

Mild Stage COPD
This is the first stage of COPD when despite chronic cough that brings up mucus some patients may show lung function that is still in the normal percentile range on spirometry tests.

Moderate Stage COPD
Cough is now associated with mucus that may also change in its appearance, alternating yellow to greenish and thicken also. The FEV1 tests clearly show deterioration of the lung health. The patient now fails to register normal, healthy spirometry readings on lung performance. Occasional COPD exacerbations may be experienced by the patient. Shortness of breath is more pronounced especially with physical exertion or exercise.

Severe COPD
In this stage, airflow limitation is very marked and impedes not just demanding physical exertion like exercise but also normal physical activity. Loss of weight is also experienced by many sufferers of COPD. Medical attention is utmost necessary to keep symptoms manageable and continue to live an active life. The spirometry tests now show alarming loss of lung functionality and overall poor lung health. Mucus production is excessive. Flare-ups occur more frequently.

End stage COPD
While the primary symptoms of COPD such as shortness of breath, cough, mucus and weight-loss worsen rapidly, more troubling new ailments develop. Lung performance is at the lowest end of performance and poor respiratory function threatens heart failure. Edema, retention of fluid in the body may commence too.

What you can do to prevent COPD

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a condition of long-lasting obstruction of the airways that occurs with chronic bronchitis, emphysema or both. Inhaled toxins are the single most common cause of COPD. These toxins irritate the airways that go from the throat to the lungs, causing the inflamed mucus lining to leak mucus into the lungs.
Tobacco smoking is the number one risk factor associated with COPD. Since tobacco smoking as an addiction is seen all over the world, the number of people suffering from COPD seems to be an ever-growing number.

As COPD is a progressive disease, one has to understand the risk factors to improve their management of symptoms and halt the rapid progression of the disease. In the US, an estimated 14 million people have been diagnosed with COPD of which 12.5 million people have chronic bronchitis, and 1.7 million people have emphysema. Several millions may be undiagnosed and therefore unaccounted for in terms of numbers.

To understand what one can do to manage and control their risk to COPD, it is helpful to break them down risk posing factors as those that can be controlled, those that can only be partially controlled and risks that cannot be controlled.

Smoking – A major risk factor
In the US, more than 120,000 people die each year from COPD. Between 80 and 90 % of all these COPD deaths are due to smoking. In the UK, COPD clamis 30,000 people every year. Most sufferers of COPD are smokers or smokers who quit the habit. If a person has never smoked, the likelihood of that person developing COPD is very low.

Tobacco smoke contains numerous poisonous chemicals and toxins. The prolonged exposure over several years to tar in cigarette smoke leads to the narrowing of the bronchioles and destruction of the lung’s filtering system. With habitual smoking, toxins and chemicals in tobacco smoke cause a build-up in the lungs over time which may cause permanent damage to lung tissue.

If you are a smoker and diagnosed with COPD giving up smoking can stop the disease from progressing even faster to the final fatal stage. Since there is correlation between the numbers of years one has smoked and the number of cigarettes one smokes on an average and the occurrence of COPD, people who are casual smokers or still not affected with COPD should quit smoking.

Controlling Other Risk Factors of COPD
Apart from tobacco smoke, other harmful substances that get into the lungs through breathing and damage them permanently are toxic chemicals, cotton dust and chemical dust or fumes.

Where smoke, chemical dust or fumes are occupational hazards that you cannot escape from use breathing aids that help filter these elements. Let your work area get as much ventilation and circulation of fresh air as possible.
Limit the time you spend exposed to secondhand smoke and industrial equipment or household appliances that give off emissions that cause respiratory ailments.

Risks Beyond Control
Some individuals are genetically predisposed to COPD due to a rare deficiency called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. This inhibits the production of a vital protein that protects lungs from damage. Other factors that affect lung health, such as asthma and low birth weight, can also hasten the progress of COPD.

COPD and its Causes
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is partially reversible airflow obstruction caused due to inflammation resulting from inhalation of toxins. Smoking is regarded as the most important risk factor in the development of COPD. Research has conclusively shown that long-term smokers of cigarettes are at increased risk of getting COPD. COPD takes years to develop and progress. Long term smokers generally exhibit symptoms of COPD in their forties or fifties if they had been smoking for about 20 years of their life.

COPD comprises of two disease conditions – chronic obstructive bronchitis and emphysema. Many patients have features of both though they may appear together or separately.
It is estimated that nearly 24 million people in the US have airflow limitation, of which nearly 12 million suffer from COPD. COPD is the 4th leading cause of deaths in the US.

COPD and Chronic Bronchitis
COPD could be the resultant progression of acute cough that causes inflammation and swelling of the mucus lining of the airways in the lung called bronchi. This leads to production of excessive mucus that settles in the lungs. This in turn, sets off chronic cough lasting at least 3 months and upto 2 successive years in duration. The presence of excessive mucus and cough result in constriction of airways that causes shortness of breath normally associated with chronic bronchitis.
Nearly all sufferers of chronic bronchitis are known to be smokers or have been smokers in the past. Tobacco smoke from cigarettes causes irritation to the airways.

COPD and Emphysema
Emphysema occurs when tiny air sacs called alveoli get affected by inhaled toxins and do not function normally. These air sacs have stretchy tissue that stretch when air is breathed in and contract when air is let out from the lungs. Within these air sacs, blood gets infused with oxygen in place of carbon dioxide left due to metabolic activity.

Emphysema causes the air sacs to collapse when an individual breathes out, trapping bad air in the lungs. This makes it hard for new air that is rich in oxygen to enter the air sacs. Damaged air sacs provide lungs with inadequate air, making one feel shortness of breath. When the air sacs get enlarged and finally collapse, they do not regenerate or get replaced. This is why damage to lungs is irreversible.

COPD and Genetic Causes
Genetic factors also contribute to COPD though such cases are much rarer in occurrence. A genetic disorder known as alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency inhibits the production of a protein that is essential to help protect lungs from damage. In smokers, it markedly influences susceptibility to the disease with many people showing symptoms of emphysema as early as in their thirties and forties. In non-smokers, this deficiency is not known to trigger COPD until very advanced age.

Other Causes of COPD
Though of lesser significance when compared to cigarette smoking, low body weight at birth, childhood respiratory diseases, secondhand cigarette smoke exposure, occupational dust like mineral dust, cotton dust and chemical fumes are also known to be contributors to the risk of COPD.