Diseases that affect airways
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD, is when you cannot exhale normally. This causes you to not breathe very well. Some symptoms include a chronic cough, fatigue, and blueish color on nails, skin, lips, or mucus. The most common cause for COPD is smoking. You can even get COPD from breathing smoke from a smoker or if you live with smoker. Another way to get COPD is it is passed down from a family member.
To see if you have COPD, you can go to your doctor and he or she will ask you questions about your medical history and about any symptoms you have. Your doctor will also conduct a physical exam and also a breathing test. A spirometey is the most common test and all you have to do is breathe into a hose connected to a machine called a spirometer. If you have COPD, your treatment is to achieve some goals. The first, obviously, is to relieve your symptoms. Other goals are to slow the decline of lung function, improve your daily lung function, and to improve your quality of life, which just means to watch and improve your health. Emphysema is when damage happens to your lungs and makes air trapped in them. It is a form of COPD because it makes blowing air out difficult. If you have shortness of breath, this is the most common symptom of emphysema. More symptoms include wheezing, coughing, or when your tolerance of exercise decreases. Emphysema does not happen all at once, it develops slowly. Again, smoking is the main cause for this disease. In order for you to know if you have emphysema, doctors will take chest x-rays to see if your lungs change do to emphysema. There are many other tests as well that doctors may do on you. These tests see if your lungs are functioning correctly, have infections, and clarify how bad the disease is, if you have it. Emphysema is not curable, but there are treatments that help prevent and slow the development of it. Medications including brochodilators, inhaled steroids, and antibiotics which help to relieve your shortness of breath, coughing, breathing problems, and bacterial infection. You can also participate in certain therapies as well. Pulmonary rehabilitation teaches certain breathing techniques that help decrease your shortness of breath and help improve your ability to exercise. You can receive good advice about nutrition, too, because many people loose weight when they are first diagnosed, and many people gain weight in late-stage emphysema. If your emphysema is severe, your doctor might suggest some surgeries like lung volume reduction and a lung transplant. Lung volume reduction surgery is when surgeons take out pieces of damaged lung tissue. This removal allows the good tissue to expand and work better and help you breathe better. The lung transplant is suggested only if everything else has failed. Asthma is when your airways get inflamed and narrow and causes you to wheeze and have shortness of breath. Sometimes people don't even know they have asthma because they don't notice the symptoms. You can experience symptoms every day or go for days or weeks without them. You can have symptoms only during the day, during the night, or right after you exercise. Symptoms of asthma include coughing, wheezing, difficulty breathing or catching your breath, and tightness in your chest, due to the airways being constricted. If you inhale airborne allergens, cold air, or air pollutants, like smoke, you can get asthma. You can also get asthma if you have a respiratory infection, like a cold. Some ways to diagnose asthma is to have a lung function test, a physical exam, and to check your medical history. It is very difficult to preform a lung function test on children younger that 5 years old, so doctors look at their medical history and symptoms more than the test. Treatments for asthma include medications, inhalers, and nebulizers. One medication is inhaled steroids. These prevent asthma attacks by reducing the swelling in the airways. This makes your airways less sensitive which helps prevent the attacks and symptoms. Inhalers deliver drugs for asthma to the lungs. There are many different types of inhalers that are used in different techniques. A nebulizer is a machine that has a mask or mouthpiece that delivers the drug(s) to your lungs that is used instead of an inhaler. Normally this machine is used on young children, older adults, or anyone whole has trouble using an inhaler. |
diseases that affect the air sacs (alveoli)
Pneumoconiosis has many different forms and categories that are caused by inhaling harmful substances the damages your lungs. Black lung is one example and it occurs when inhale coal dust. This disease can take several years to develop, but if you work where you inhale harmful substances, you can get it quicker depending on how much you breathe and what you breathe. Breathlessness, cough, chronic cough, emphysema, and tightness of your chest are all symptoms of pneumoconiosis.
There is a Federal Mine Safety and Health Act that requires all coal miners that work underground to have their chest x-rayed to look for Black Lung Disease. They take these x-rays after they have worked there for three years and then they take another one every five years. Doctors will also ask them about their medical history and conduct a physical exam. Treatment for pneumoconiosis is to avoid any and all dust exposure, use oxygen, and to take bronchodilators to open up your airways in your lungs. Pneumonia is an infection in the alveolar in your lungs. This infection is usually caused by bacteria, viruses, or fungi and can be lethal to young children and adults over 65. This infection causes the air sacks in your lungs to swell and become inflamed and fill with fluid. Coughing with phlegm or pus, chills, difficulty breathing, sharp pain in your chest, loss of appetite, fatigue, headaches, and fever are all symptoms of pneumonia. Pneumonia is diagnosed by your doctor by doing a physical exam, which he or she uses the stethoscope to listen to you breath, and taking chest x-rays. Some patients need blood tests taken in order to see if their white blood cell count is okay and if the right amount of oxygen is getting to their lungs. Treatment include drinking a lot, resting, and taking aspirin, but children should not take aspirin. |