The Patient Experience

According to Colin D. Mathers and Dejan Loncar in their article “Projections of Global Mortality and Burden of Disease from 2002 to 2030 COPD will become the fourth most common cause of death across the globe. America’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute say the “economic burden of COPD in the U.S. in 2007 was $42.6 billion in health care costs and lost productivity”.

In the UK it has been estimated that around one million perhaps more people with COPD. This is based upon extrapolating figures from “Trends in the epidemiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in England: a national study of 51 804 patients” by Simpson, Hippisley-Cox and Sheikh in 2010.

At the same time COPD seems to get very little coverage in the media for such a widespread condition. Click here for more

COPD or Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a collective/ umbrella term covering a variety of lung conditions and diseases,including the two more common conditions chronic bronchitis and emphysema. People with COPD have airflow obstruction and therefore reduced airflow,which cannot be fully improved by treatment. This obstruction arises from defects in the cleaning system of smokers’ and COPD sufferers’ lungs.

Both conditions co-exist in each patient to various degrees. Bronchitis is inflammation of the bronchi and is defined clinically as a persistent cough that produces sputum (phlegm) and mucus,i.e. productive cough on most days for at least three months of the year for more than one year. Click here for more