Home Doctor: Practical Medicine for Every Household
5. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) To begin to dig deeper into this disease, it is important to know a little bit about the anatomy of the lungs in order to understand the damage that occurs in a patient suffering from this condition. The lungs are the main respiratory organs, and through them, the blood gains oxygen and can irrigate the organs to work properly. This occurs through the process of breathing or ventilation, which begins at the top of the respiratory tract with inhalation.
This air passes through airways that begin as tubes about 0.7 inches in diameter and end in circumferences of minimal size. The end of these small tubes is the alveoli, where the exchange of gases occurs. This means that the oxygen-depleted blood passes through a process of oxygenation and returns to circulation through the vascular system of the lung, which brings it directly to the heart. With the expiration, the lungs remove the deoxygenated air with carbon dioxide to complete the respiratory cycle. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive inflammatory process that obstructs the flow of air from the lungs by decreasing their capacity to ventilate. It is caused by prolonged exposure to irritants, the main one being cigarette smoke. There is no cure for this disease. Once installed, it causes permanent lung damage, leaving whole areas without any function. 103
