Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) refers to long-term lung disease with symptoms like persistent coughing, wheezing, breathlessness, or tightness in the chest. COPD is linked to smoking, but it is also related to exposure to toxic fumes, dust, and even pollution in the environment. COPD causes the airways to become inflamed and narrowed, making breathing difficult as time passes in such patients, who gradually lose lung function.
First off, once a patient is diagnosed with COPD, a primary treatment would be to eliminate the cause of the COPD. If the condition is due to smoking, quitting smoking is paramount. In cases where an individual's COPD is due to environmental causes, this must be addressed also-through means of using protective outfits or changing the surrounding environments in which they work or live in. However, in recent years, poor air quality has emerged as one of the contributing factors to having more frequent and worse exacerbations of COPD.
