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COPD is air hunger that is the result of lung damage from cigarette smoking. It has a predictable prognosis and when advanced, is a horrible disease. Aggressive treatment gives them several months of life, perhaps more, but not much more. Doctors divide COPD into type types, emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Much ado is made about the difference between these two entities, emphysema being characterized by a gaunt patient breathing heavily, while in bronchitis, the patient is constantly coughing and producing sputum. In actuality, these two entities overlap.

If you are diagnosed as having COPD, there are three things you must do. The first of these is to stop smoking. Secondly, you have to stop smoking. Third and most important, you must stop smoking. Early in the course of COPD, the cessation of smoking may stop the progression of the disease and actually permit the improvement of lung function. Unfortunately, if the COPD is advanced, the cessation of smoking will not prevent the COPD from getting worse, although it may do so at a slower rate.

Your doctor will monitor your lung function with pulmonary function tests. You are asked to blow rapidly into a tube that is connected to a machine that measures the volume of air expired over a period of time, a spirometer. second. This is called the forced expiratory volume or FEV1. A simplified analogy would be to see how large you can blow up a balloon in one second. If you have COPD, your airways are obstructed end you expire less air. Your FEV1 is decreased, depending on how many cigarettes you smoke a day, how many years you’ve been smoking and how your lungs respond to the cigarettes. Even before the spirometer was invented, physicians knew that a COPD patient had the inability to exhale large amounts of air rapidly and tested him by having him attempt to blow out a match held one foot away from his mouth. The FEV1 is a fairly accurate prediction of your prognosis and this INFOMED will ask for its value. It can still give you a good idea of your prognosis if you don't know your FEV1.

Treatment of COPD revolves around medications to improve respiratory function, antibiotics to stamp out frequent infections and supplemental oxygen administration. Wile these regimens can abate symptoms they do not reverse the declining lung function. The main fear of COPD patients is that they will die a hideous death from suffocations. This is rarely the case. COPD patients slip quietly into a coma and have a comfortable peaceful death if nature is allowed to take its course. A major question that all patients with COPD must address is whether they want to be intubated.

If you insist on a full-court press when your COPD enters the terminal phase, you can have a miserable death. What happens is, you go into the emergency room and the emergency room doctors do their job. They see that you are having difficulty breathing and put you on a respirator. Now comes the problem. Your doctors must wean you, but if your lungs are endstage, it is not possible. You just stay on the respirator, sometimes for weeks, until a heart attack or infection ends your life.

Thus, when you reach the terminal state of COPD, consider avoiding emergency rooms and hospitals. Your home or a hospice is the place to be. Home care for COPD patients has greatly improved. Portable oxygen tanks make it possible for ambulation and even visits outside the home. There are even light-weight liquid oxygen systems that can be carried on your back. They are expensive and you are going to have to pull teeth from Medicare and your insurance company to pay for them. Studies have shown that home-oxygen therapy can improve quality of life and even increase life span. Most of the medications and therapy can be given at home. It is even possible to have a portable respirator in our house that can attach to a hole in your windpipe when you are having breathing difficulties. Many hospitals and communities have wonderful pulmonary rehabilitation programs that help patients and their families cope with this disease.