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Alf, and scores of people like him, are getting their breath back thanks to a recently introduced pulmonary rehabilitation programme - exercise specifically designed for patients with chronic lung disease.
The rehabilitation classes have been so successful that a new programme of maintenance classes is about to start in two city leisure centres, so patients continue to feel supported and motivated and there is less risk of back sliding.
In recent months practice nurses in surgeries and health centres across Dundee have identified patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who would benefit from better management of the serious lung condition usually caused by smoking.
The patients have been sent to King's Cross Hospital where physiotherapists in the community therapies department have established a special eight-week long exercise programme.
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Shocking statistics relating to deaths from lung disease were revealed at a meeting in Murray Royal Hospital, Perth, today, writes Marjory Inglis, medical reporter.
A Dundee-based specialist nurse said that 31,000 people die in the UK every year from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an umbrella term for chronic lung disease.
Janet Winter, COPD facilitator, was speaking at a meeting of Tayside Primary Care, the organisation responsible for a number of hospitals and community health services in the region.
She was outlining a "gold standard" COPD management programme available in the city.
She highlighted "the huge burden of disease" and pointed out that if it was not brought under control far more people would become severely disabled with lung disease that was largely smoking-related.
Mrs Winter said that in the last ten years the death rate from COPD amongst women in Scotland had risen by 50%.
EFFORTS (Emphysema Foundation For Our Right To Survive), the largest patient organization in the United States working to raise awareness for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD, took their message to Congress today during a rally held at the United States Capitol building.
COPD is an umbrella term for two respiratory diseases -- chronic bronchitis and emphysema -- and is caused primarily by smoking (90 percent of cases). There are more than 30 million Americans who suffer from COPD, but only 16 million have been diagnosed with the respiratory disease. COPD is the only one of the top 10 causes of death on the rise, with 110,000 Americans dying each year, and is estimated to become the third leading cause of death in the United States by 2020.
More than 30 members of Congress were represented at the rally, where a large contingent from EFFORTS gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol. "It is crucial that we do everything we can to stop the spread of this deadly disease and help those patients who are currently suffering," said United States Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT). "We have come a long way in reducing smoking."
New advances in pulmonary rehabilitation research are holding promise of improving the quality of life for those affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is the nation's 4th leading cause of mortality. Harbor-UCLA Research & Education Institute (REI) principal investigator Richard Casaburi, Ph.D., M.D. is exploring anabolic drug therapy for women suffering from emphysema and chronic bronchitis, both forms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Dr. Casaburi postulates that anabolic drug therapy (testosterone) can stimulate muscle growth, and improve strength in women with emphysema and chronic bronchitis. It is hoped that in the near future, this may become routine therapy for COPD patients. This study is funded by the University of California's Tobacco Related Disease Research Program.
COPD is an overwhelmingly smoking-related disease, and the only leading cause of death for which the mortality rates are rising.
With Every Breath, hosted by the late Peter Gzowski just before his untimely death from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), airs Sunday, April 28 on Global TV and the Prime Network.
This commercial free half-hour program will give viewers an understanding of what Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is, who gets it, symptoms, treatment and control. With Every Breath features Canada's leading respirologists and interviews with sufferers of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
Sufferers of COPD agree that when you can't breathe, nothing else matters. If you are curious as to what everyday life is like for a person with COPD try breathing through a straw for just a minute or two. Sufferers of COPD are breathing like that twenty-four hours a day every day. One in five people in hospital have COPD. The disease kills one Canadian every hour and one of those people was Peter Gzowski.
It is well known that tobacco consumption causes a respiratory disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), characterized by formation of emphysema and progressive destruction of the lung.
When pulmonary vessels are altered in this disease, life expectancy of the patients worsens. It has not been possible to establish the cause, but it has been attributed to low oxygen concentration in the blood.
However, changes in the pulmonary vessels have also been found in COPD patients with normal oxygen concentrations. These abnormalities mainly consist of the thickening of the internal coat of pulmonary arteries, resulting in a decrease of the arterial lumen size.
The cellular and extracellular components that are involved in this enlargement are unknown.
A study published in this month's European Respiratory Journal (ERJ) by Prof. J.A. Barbera of the Servei de Pneumologia Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues was designed to characterize the changes occurring in pulmonary arteries of patients with mild COPD and in smokers who have not yet developed the disease.
Evidence of blood vessel damage in the lungs of smokers with early lung disease could lead researchers towards new drugs.
Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have often suffered so much damage to their lungs by the time they are diagnosed that there is little that can be done to help them.
The illness, a combination of emphysema and chronic bronchitis, is often caused by long-term smoking.
The only therapy is giving oxygen, which delivers some benefits but cannot prevent eventual deterioration and death from the illness.
It is the most common cause of respiratory-related death in the UK - and 56% of all working days lost among men are due to it, costing the economy many billions of pounds each year.
There is debate among doctors about whether to try to develop treatments for the lungs of the patients - or the blood vessels supplying the lungs.
The latest research, published in the European Respiratory Journal, could help push research towards the blood vessels.
Globally, 600 million people suffer from emphysema or chronic obstructive bronchitis, together known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). With few effective treatments, COPD represents one of the major unmet pharmaceutical markets and consequently some three million dye from the disease each year. This figure is set to increase over the next two decades leading to analysts to suggest that COPD will be the 5th most common cause of death by 2020 To address the growing need to develop improved treatments of COPD, LeadDiscovery, the drug discovery, development and transfer consultants, have collaborated with Professor Peter Barnes, the field leader in the area of airway disease to produce a key state of the art analysis of COPD, over-viewing current treatment strategies, critically assessing new therapeutic targets, and suggesting experimental models and screening architectures most likely to allow these targets to be exploited.
Despite being a major killer, many people view COPD as "self-inflicted" with smoking being one of the major causes of COPD. Hence public opinion has maybe forced research funding towards other diseases. According to one of the study authors, Dr Jon Goldhill "this does not appear to be the real reason for lack of progress in COPD. There are many examples of therapeutic progress in so called "self-inflicted" diseases. Furthermore, the human and economic cost of COPD is massive and this is matched by an equally large global market for COPD treatments, estimated to be as much as US$2.8 billion each year. These figures firmly suggest that the financial driving force exists to push the field of COPD therapeutics forwards".
So what is the reason for the inertia surrounding COPD?
More than 20,000 Americans with medical conditions such as emphysema, cystic fibrosis, severe asthma, multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy are wearing an inflatable vest to keep their airway passages open, allowing them to breathe.
The device, manufactured by Advanced Respiratory in St. Paul, Minn., is simply called the Vest.
"The Vest is like an inflatable life jacket. The inflatable vest is connected by hoses to an air-pulse generator that inflates and deflates the vest as rapidly as 25 times per second, creating air flow within the lungs," said Stephen Smith, vice president of corporate affairs and general counsel for Advanced Respiratory, who was in Washington last week.
The first national program in North America to address the education needs of patients suffering from COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) will be launched at The Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences on Monday, November 19, 2001 at 11:45 a.m. COPD is a major cause of chronic morbidity and mortality worldwide. The disease is increasing in prevalence and is expected to be the third leading cause of death in the world by 2020. An estimated 750,000 Canadians are affected (a four-fold increase since 1971). This program has been developed through a unique collaboration of international and national private and public sector organizations. The partners include:
The Canadian and Ontario Lung Associations
The Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences
AstraZeneca (Canada Inc)
Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd
GlaxoSmithKline (Canada) Inc
Smoker siblings of patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have a significant risk of airflow obstruction, according to an article in the second issue for October of the American Thoracic Society’s (ATS) peer-reviewed journal.
Writing in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, David A. Lomas, Ph.D., of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, Cambridge, UK, along with five associates, showed that 44 (34.9 percent) of 126 current or ex-smoking siblings of COPD patients had airflow obstruction in keeping with COPD.
In addition, 36 of the siblings also had forced expiratory volume in 1 second lung function tests of less than 80 percent of the predicted value, which was also in keeping with COPD. . .
“Approximately one-quarter of the siblings who completed the questionnaire and spirometry test were nonsmokers,” said Dr. Lomas. “These siblings had essentially normal lung function. This reinforces the clear message that irreversible airflow obstruction is linked to tobacco smoking.”
The first national program in North America to address the education needs of patients suffering from COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) will be launched at The Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences on Monday, November 19, 2001 at 11:45 a.m.
COPD is a major cause of chronic morbidity and mortality worldwide. The disease is increasing in prevalence and is expected to be the third leading cause of death in the world by 2020. An estimated 750,000 Canadians are affected (a four-fold increase since 1971).
This program has been developed through a unique collaboration of international and national private and public sector organizations. The partners include:
Tomorrow, on the day of the Great American Smokeout, actress Loni Anderson will be working to help women across America understand that unless they can begin kicking the cigarette habit, they will soon become the number one victims of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), the respiratory illness resulting primarily from smoking tobacco.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20011114/ATW003 )
A recent study published in the medical journal CHEST indicates that in the next few years more women than men will die from COPD, which is commonly referred to as "smoker's lung." . .
According to the study, this change is attributed to the social pressures women experience, as well as the aggressive cigarette advertising campaigns targeting women over the past three decades that have promoted a glamorous and thin image in association with smoking. . .
Dr. Dennis Doherty, co-chairman of the National Lung Health Education Program, says he often sees the reluctance to quit smoking from many of his female patients. . .
To encourage patients to quit smoking, Doherty believes a lung test may be an effective tool. For the test, the patient is asked to take a deep breath in and then blow as hard as possible into a spirometer for six seconds to measure lung function.
"The lung test clearly shows the condition of the patient's airways," said Doherty, who recommends the use of a spirometer to test all current and former smokers over the age of 45, as well as any individual experiencing a chronic cough, mucus production or shortness of breath. "If lung function is abnormal, the patient will be given an inhaler, such as COMBIVENT(R) Inhalation Aerosol, and then asked to repeat the lung test. This will show the patient the improvement in their lung function and is usually a good motivator for smoking cessation."
It has been suggested that oxidative stress protein heme oxygenase (HO)-1 plays a role in chronic airway diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The inducible isoform HO-1 and the constitutive HO-2 catalyze the same reaction... Lower percentages of alveolar macrophages exhibited positive staining for HO-2 without significant differences between the three groups. HO-2+ cells in the alveolar wall were increased in smokers with (15/mm) and without COPD (12/mm) as compared with nonsmokers (8/mm, p < 0.01). In conclusion, inducible HO-1 and constitutive HO-2 are detectable in human lung tissue and their expression is increased in smokers, suggesting that oxidative stress due to cigarette smoke may increase lung cells expressing HO-1 and HO-2.
Although familial clustering has been described, few studies have quantified the risk of airflow obstruction in siblings of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)... One hundred eleven current or ex-smoking siblings were matched for age, sex, and smoking history with 419 subjects, without a known family history of COPD, from the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC)-Norfolk cohort. The prevalence of COPD was much lower in the EPIC group (9.3%) when compared with the siblings (31.5%; odds ratio, 4.70; 95% confidence interval, 2.63 to 8.41). The odds ratio for COPD in siblings with less than a 30 pack-year smoking history was 5.39 (95% confidence interval, 2.49 to 11.67) when compared with matched control subjects. Taken together these results demonstrate a significant familial risk of airflow obstruction in smoking siblings of patients with severe COPD.