“Let me take a breath!” When most of us become tired in the midst of a busy day, we can put aside our workload for a moment and inhale and exhale deeply. Deep breaths refresh us, relieving a feeling of suffocation and restoring peace and stability of mind.
However, for those who can’t breathe properly, who constantly wheeze and find themselves short of breath, and who have difficulty walking because of this, there is no relief from the feeling of suffocation. Such is the case for many patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who experience such difficulty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Around the world, COPD causes one death every 10 seconds, according to the World Health Organization. When COPD is severe, patients find that their quality of life is greatly impaired.
COPD is not one disease, but an umbrella term for chronic lung conditions, including emphysema, in which the respiratory tract becomes blocked.
Emphysema is a condition in which the air sacs in the lungs are damaged. Imagine the lungs are like a tree: Air enters through roots (the nose or mouth), flows into the trunk (the trachea), then to the branches (the bronchial tubes), the twigs, (the bronchioli), and eventually the leaves, which are the approximately 500 million alveoli, the sacs at the end bronchioli where the air meets our blood.
When there are many alveoli, breathing is comfortable because the number of alveoli determines breathing capacity. Emphysema destroys the walls between the alveoli, bursting the sacs like bubbles. The number of alveoli decreases rapidly from a healthy 500 million. When there are only 200 million, patients find themselves short of breath.
The lungs also fill with phlegm, causing coughing, and if emphysema becomes severe, the patient may have difficulty blowing out a candle from as little as 5 inches away. The decrease in alveoli also means less oxygen is delivered to the blood, and less carbon dioxide is discharged, which has an adverse effect on the overall health of the body.
Once the lungs are damaged, it is difficult to restore them to their original healthy state. Although healthy lungs can overcome pneumonia quite well, weakened lungs cannot. The five-year survival rate for people with COPD ranges from 30–60 percent, depending on the severity of the disease.
