Hello, I'm Dr. Eric Smith.
I'm a pulmonary and critical care physician here at Bronson.
I work primarily in the Bronson Battle Creek office.
We also have offices in Kalamazoo and Paw Paw.
And yeah, today I wanted to talk a little bit about COPD.
Today, I thought would be kind of a COPD frequently asked questions topic and I guess what I would say is this is really based on guidelines that we use for COPD.
And there's a couple of different like colleges that tell us about these things.
But I'm going to try and keep this informal and answer questions I think a lot of people wonder about.
And so, for one what is COPD?
Well, it's an acronym.
It stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
And, yeah, the pulmonary part, that's easy, those are your lungs.
That's what we do, disease, that's why you see doctors.
The chronic and the obstructive part, they get a little bit trickier.
And so, for one, what causes COPD?
Well here in the United States the number one cause by far is smoking cigarettes.
And no presentation about COPD would be complete without me saying that anybody who's smoking should quit smoking.
You could always benefit from quitting smoking cigarettes.
Worldwide, there are a number of other causes, things like genetics or if you are cooking a lot or if you have a wood burning stove, these things can also damage the lungs and cause COPD.
But really, when we think COPD we think about cigarettes.
And so yeah, the C stands for chronic.
And that means that damage has been done to the lungs and they will never be back to normal. They can get better.
There's lots of ways that they can be improved, but they will never be normal.
We diagnosis with what's called the pulmonary function test and yeah that's how we can see how bad your lungs are.
But these numbers can be improved on.
And the best way to do that is quitting smoking.
Things like exercise can help with that.
And things like inhalers which we'll talk a little bit about.
The obstructive part, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the obstruction part is also a little bit tricky to understand.
The way I like to think about this is, as an obstructed pipe.
You've got your windpipe, your trachea, your bronchus, and smoking cigarettes can cause inflammation in these pipes and lead them to be obstructed.
They can be tight.
This is really where a lot of the symptoms of COPD come from.
Symptoms of COPD include things like shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, mucus, bronchitis, pneumonia.
Well, you can't get air in and out of your lungs as well through these tight pipes, mucus can collect and can't get out through these pipes.
And yeah, that's the way I like to think about obstruction.
And fortunately, we've got really good medicine for that.
We have come a long, long way with inhalers.
Inhalers are bronchodilators.
They all work in a little bit of a different way, but they can be pretty easy to take, and what they do is open up those windpipes and keep them open.
And they can do a lot for people with COPD.
They can help them feel a lot better.
They can make those numbers on the breathing tests look better.
They can actually help you live longer.
And so, for many reasons this is what we do.
We love seeing people with problems like this because we can really help.
And I guess, COPD can be a very serious issue.
And I want to stress the importance of quitting smoking.
COPD is now the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.
And this is a problem that can get better. It is never too late.
You can take these inhalers and they can help you live longer.
You can quit smoking.
There's exercise programs.
There's so much that can be done.
And I just want to emphasize that it's never too late.
You could be better. And we could help you with that.
And, yeah, I hope this helped answer some questions about COPD.
Thank you.
