Acute Atypical Bronchitis - COPD - Definition, Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment
What does COPD mean? COPD stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It encompasses two types of disease processes namely chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Quite often, people who suffer from COPD show a combination of features of both disease processes. In lay person's term, COPD means persistent lung disease with features of airway narrowing. To be more specific, bronchitis means inflammation of the bronchi or the larger airways of the lungs whereas emphysema means destruction to the smaller airways and alveoli or airsacs of the lungs. Thus COPD is commonly used to describe chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or both.
COPD a Common Condition?
It is one of the commonest conditions that require hospital admission during period of flare-ups. According to one epidemiology study in the US, approximately eight million people have chronic bronchitis whereas 2 million people have emphysema. As we can see, chronic bronchitis is more common than emphysema.
COPD Sounds Like Asthma, are They Any Different?
Yes. Both COPD and asthma cause similar symptoms, however, they are different in certain ways. COPD causes permanent damage to the airways. The obstruction is 'fixed', hence it is irreversible in general terms. However, airway narrowing in asthma is intermittent and reverses quite easily with medication. Having said that, both COPD and asthma is common, people who suffer COPD can have an asthmatic component and vice versa.
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What are the Causes of COPD?
Smoking. Smoking is the number 1 cause of COPD. More than 90 percent of COPDs are caused by smoking, cigarette or otherwise. About 30 percent of long term smokers will eventually show symptoms of COPD of varying degrees. Other causes include air pollution and inherited enzyme deficiency namely alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
What are the Treatments of COPD?
First of all. Stop smoking. This cannot be stressed enough. Smoking cessation is the first thing you have to do if you want to get better. As the underlying mechanism of COPD is irreversible, medications are used with an aim to slow down it's progress. Drugs that are commonly used to treat COPD include short-acting bronchodilator inhalers (i.e. salbutamol), long-acting bronchodilator inhalers (i.e. tiotropium), steroid inhalers and tablets are all available drugs for treatment of COPD. Again, no treatment is more important that stop smoking. Lung transplant is the last option and should be reserved for people with severe COPD. Having been given the assignment of writing an interesting presentation on Chronic Bronchitis, this is what we came up with. Just hope you find it interesting too!
What are the Symptoms of COPD?
The two main symptoms are cough and breathlessness. COPD sufferers commonly complain about breathlessness and cough that develop gradually over a long period of time. The cough that COPD sufferer gets are usually productive which means they commonly cough up phlegm. The cough usually comes and goes initially but tends to become persistent as time passes. Breathlessness is usually intermittent and only occurs with exertion in the beginning, however if you continue to smoke, the breathlessness persists even when you are at rest, this can be quite distressing! Other symptoms are chronic sputum production, where you constantly cough up phlegm all day and recurrent chest infection. People with COPD are more prone to chest infection for obvious reasons, as the lining in the lung looses its normal defense mechanism against intruding bugs. It is not necessary that only the learned can write about Chronic Bronchitis. As long as one ahs a flair for writing, and an interest for gaining information on Chronic Bronchitis, anyone can write about it.
What Tests are Needed to Diagnose COPD?
A test called spirometry is often performed to diagnose COPD. Bronchodilators (drugs that cause the airway to dilate) are usually added to confirm the diagnosis. If the test result does not show improvement with bronchodilators, then COPD is very likely. We have taken the privilege of proclaiming this article to be a very informative and interesting article on Emphysema Chronic Bronchitis. We now give you the liberty to proclaim it too.
The bronchi make the connections between the lungs and the windpipe. They are lining of your bronchial tubes and allow air to flow into your body. These bronchi can get infected, or inflamed making it harder fro air to travel to the lungs. This condition is called bronchitis.
- Apart form making it very difficult to breath, the inflammation of the bronchi can also cause mucus in the airways, or phlegm.
- There are two types of bronchitis: acute and chronic bronchitis.
- There can also be another type of bronchitis, but only in people who suffer from asthma.
- Patience was exercised in this article on Bronchitis.
- Without patience, it would not have been possible to write extensively on Bronchitis.
Is Only Necessary for the Bronchial Tubes to Get Irritated
For more than two weeks and the qunatity of muscus that the body produces increases. This part of the body starts to thicken, coughing becomes even worse than before, problems in breathing start to grow even more alarming and the lungs are therefor in more danger. Bronchial tubes are a very good place for infections. We have actually followed a certain pattern while writing on Bronchitis Virus. We have used simple words and sentences to facilitate easy understanding for the reader.
- The first type of bronchitis, the acute one, can develop from a cold that you might suffer and usually lasts a week at the most.
- It can also be caused by viral infections.
- It is accompanied by cough, pain in the middle of the chest and sometimes even fever.
- When suffering from acute bronchitis, one might experience some shortness of breath, but very little and fro short periods of time.
- Penetration into the world of Bronchitis Virus proved to be our idea in this article.
- Read the article and see if we have succeeded in this or not!
- The second type of bronchitis, the chronic one is caracterized by a cough that produces mucus.
- In people suffering from this ilness, problems breathing are very dens.
- They are also more likely to get lung infections, thing which can generate even more problems with their breathing.
- This ilness is mainly characterized by clogged or narrowed airways, thing which causes the problems you might have breathing.
- It gets very difficult for air to from the environment to the lungs.
- We consider that we have only touched the perimeter of information available on Bronchitis.
- There is still a lot more to be learnt!
- Is very important to know that the reason we get acute bronchitis is due to viruses in almost all of the cases.
- Viruses travel through the air and when they go into the bronchi, cause an infection.
- Our body then tries to protect us from the virus.
- When this happens more mucus is produced and the swelling can get even worse.
- We get bronchitis from the same virus that causes the cold, though there are times when a bacteria can cause bronchitis.
- This is more likely to happen after you have suffered from a cold.
- Perhaps you may not have been interested in this passage on Acute Bronchitis.
- In that case, please don't spread this feedback around!
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