COPD Prognosis

chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  

"We have no cure, no treatments that will stop progression or reverse the condition," 

says a Dr. "But we can do better by getting to people early."

Some symptoms

The first symptoms of COPD are frequent coughing and more mucus or phlegm coughed 

up from the lungs. Your chest may start to feel tight. The coughing begins to disturb 

your sleep.. You may feel tired, and become short of breath when walking up a hill or a 

flight of stairs. It's tempting to think of these symptoms as just a part of normal ageing. 

But they may not be.

"If you've smoked, are over 45, get short of breath doing daily activities, or are backing 

off your exercise regimen because of a little breathlessness at the end -- all those are 

reasons not just to talk with your primary care provider but maybe to talk to a lung 

specialist,"  says a Dr.

COPD diagnosis depends on a test called spirometry. The test measures how much air 

you can force from the lungs and how fast it blows out.

Early Disease

There is no such thing as an average case of COPD. One person's experience may differ 

dramatically from another's.

"Most people don't seek medical attention until they are short of breath and unable to do 

normal activities,” says pulmonologist . “By the time this happens, there's been a critical 

loss of some lung function."

In general, lung function declines slowly but steadily, until there's a sudden worsening of 

symptoms. That speeds up lung damage.

To monitor someone with COPD, doctors keep tabs on their current symptoms, lung 

function tests, and other conditions such as heart disease and diabetes that are often 

also seen in people with COPD.

Diagnosed early enough, a person with risk factors for COPD might be able to get off the 

slippery slope of worsening lung function.

"At that point, the most important thing would be to really quit smoking. "And then their 

other focus would be being up to date on immunizations -- a flu shot and 

 pneumonia shot. If someone had no symptoms but just these frequent infections and 

very early signs of decline, that person would not necessarily progress to worsening 

COPD."

Later Disease

People who have COPD can expect increasing breathlessness over time.

At first, this just means being short of breath after strenuous exercise. Later, it means 

getting out of breath from walking in a hurry, or from going up a flight of stairs. 

Eventually, someone with COPD has to stop for breath after walking slowly for just a few 

minutes. In the end, dressing and undressing becomes difficult.

Fortunately, there's a lot that can be done to make it easier to breathe. For smokers, 

quitting smoking is always the most important step at any stage of COPD. Preventing 

infections is important, so make sure to be vaccinated for flu and pneumococcal 

disease. So are drug treatments that make it easier to breathe.

"For those with very advanced COPD, we offer pulmonary rehabilitation,"  says the Dr.

"We focus on improving quality of life, reducing shortness of breath, and increasing 

exercise tolerance. Pulmonary rehab improves outcomes in COPD."

Exercise always helps. "Even if patients are still independent in daily activities and fully 

employed, any degree of activity would help. "Making sure breathing 

muscles are in good condition lets people use their lungs to their fullest capacity to 

improve shortness of breath."

In the later stages of COPD, when the lungs can't get enough oxygen, proper use of 

home oxygen makes a big difference.

"We make every effort to educate patients about using home oxygen on a regular basis," 

says a Dr. "It is one of the interventions that improve survival and longevity."

The Future of COPD

Early diagnosis of COPD has been the exception rather than the rule. As that changes, 

more and more people with COPD will enter clinical trials.

Dr. says that what's needed right now are small, relatively fast clinical trials to find 

treatments that work for at least some people with COPD, and to learn why some 

treatments work for some people and not for others.

"To manage the COPD patient, we are going to have a variety of agents that will hit 

different disease pathways," he says. "We must then figure out how to combine them to 

improve lung structure and function."

And in the not-too-distant future, Dr. expects regenerative medicine to provide tools to 

repair lungs damaged by COPD, which is the No. 3 cause of death in the U.S.

"We are on a pathway that in 10 years will make things very different for the COPD 

patient," he says. "We hope for novel therapies at a minimum. And at a maximum, would 

like to say we can regrow lung tissue, repair lung injury, or actually cure COPD. That is 

a reach, but not totally out of our game plans."

ps- this is only for information, always consult you physician before having any particular food/ medication/exercise/other remedies.

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