World COPD Day 2013: one more chance to make some noise for COPD

The early stages of COPD are often unrecognized, in part because many individuals discount symptoms such as breathlessness, chronic cough, and bringing up phlegm as a normal part of getting older or an expected consequence of cigarette smoking.

 

World COPD Day in Moldova!

 

“Better awareness of COPD symptoms like chronic cough and breathlessness is key to improving early diagnosis,” says Dr. Marc Decramer, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD). GOLD is the organizer of World COPD Day.

 

World COPD Day in Moldova!

COPD is diagnosed using a breathing test called spirometry. This test, which is painless and takes only a few minutes, measures the amount of air a person can breathe out, and the amount of time taken to do so. Researchers are also studying additional ways to identify COPD earlier in the course of disease.

There is no cure for COPD, which may also contribute to underdiagnosis of the disease. People whose breathlessness is more severe may find the possibility of finding out that they have COPD frightening, and avoid seeking treatment. “COPD treatment is most effective when begun early in the course of the disease,” says Dr. Jorgen Vestbo, Vice-Chair of the GOLD Board of Directors. “However, at all stages of disease, treatments are available that reduce symptoms such as breathlessness and enable people to participate more fully in daily life.” Furthermore, new medications hold the promise of treating COPD more effectively and with fewer side effects. Scientists are also studying disease markers that in the future may enable them to predict when a person’s COPD symptoms will get worse. “In order to reduce the burden of COPD, we have to identify more of the people who have it,” says Dr. Vestbo.

COPD occurs most often in patients who are over age 40 and who have a history of exposure to COPD risk factors. Worldwide, the most commonly encountered risk factor for COPD is cigarette smoking.  Other important risk factors include dusts and chemicals encountered on the job and smoke from biomass fuels (such as coal, wood, and animal dung) burned for cooking and heating in poorly ventilated dwellings, especially in developing countries.

Patients may be able to slow or even stop the progress of COPD by reducing their exposure to risk factors for the disease. Without treatment, however, COPD is generally a progressive disease, and as the disease gets worse patients become breathless during everyday activities such as climbing a flight of stairs, walking the dog, or even getting washed and dressed in the morning.

World COPD Day was first held in 2002, and has grown each year to become one of the most important COPD events globally. On World COPD Day, dozens of awareness-raising activities for health care professionals, COPD patients, the general public, and the media will take place in countries all over the world.

World COPD Day 2013: 2 days left!!!

Dear Respiratory Friends,

We will celebrate World COPD Day 2013 on 20 November!

This is very good chance to make visible this Respiratory Condition and to increase awareness for COPD at the global level!

Support us and Stop COPD with Respiratory Decade! Thank you!
We are sharing with you great video from 2010 dedicated to World COPD Day!

Use COPD GOLD Ribbon on World COPD Day 2013!!!

Use COPD GOLD Ribbon this month for helping us to spread the word and increase awareness for COPD!!! We are continuing COPD awareness Day campaign and also COPD month! Stop smoking and Stop COPD!!!

 

World COPD Day 2013 is under corner

Dear Respiratory friends World COPD Day 2013 is under corner!!! Join our Social Media event: World COPD Day 2013 on Respiratory Decade!!

or direct link:

https://www.facebook.com/events/231327290364322/

Efforts to improve early diagnosis, develop new treatments, and better predict patients’ prognoses are leading to renewed optimism in the fight against one of the world’s most prevalent respiratory diseases.

The illness, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is a non-communicable lung disease that progressively robs sufferers of breath. COPD is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide, causing more than 3 million deaths every year, and up to half of people with the disease don’t know they have it.

20 November 2013 is the twelfth annual World COPD Day, an event held each November to raise awareness of COPD worldwide. This year’s World COPD Day theme, “It’s not too late,” emphasizes the meaningful actions people can take to improve their respiratory health, at any stage before or after a COPD diagnosis.

30th anniversary of the first successful single-lung transplant

Dear Respiratory friends we are congratulating everybody with wonderful anniversary of the first successful lung transplant!!!

Last year alone, 1,754 lung transplants were performed throughout the U.S., according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Yet not long ago, lung transplantation was regarded as one of thoracic surgery's great unsolved challenges. "It was thought that the bronchus might just be the Achilles' heel of transplantation, and it just was an insoluble problem," says Joel D. Cooper, MD, 74, from his office at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Monica Assenheimer (from left), the second single-lung recipient, Tom Hall, the world’s first single-lung recipient, and Ann Harrison, the world’s first double-lung recipient. The University of Toronto will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first successful lung transplant and honor Dr. Cooper at a ceremony Nov. 6.
Photo Courtesy of University of Toronto’s Living History project, livinghistory.med.utoronto.ca.

After participating in the 44th failed attempt in the late 1970s, Dr. Cooper retreated to his lab at University of Toronto. With the support of his colleagues and a number of research fellows from around the world, they conducted a series of wound-healing experiments in dogs that uncovered the culprit: high doses of the immunosuppressant drug prednisone interfered with the healing process. Using omentum and cyclosporin (both experimental at the time), Dr. Cooper and his team completed the first successful lung transplant in 1983 on a 58-year-old Canadian hardware executive and pulmonary fibrosis patient Tom Hall, and the procedure was reproducible.

"When everybody failed, Joel never gave up on making the dream of lung transplantation a reality," says Shaf Keshavjee, MD, surgeon in chief at (Toronto) University Heath Network and director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program, which Dr. Cooper initiated. "Thousands of lung patients are alive because of Joel's contributions."

November marks the 30th anniversary of the first successful single-lung transplant, but it's hardly Dr. Cooper's only contribution to thoracic surgery and medicine. Dr. Cooper, a professor of surgery at Penn and an ATS member since 1976, directed the first successful double-lung transplants in 1986 and 1987, and later the bilateral, sequential, single-lung transplantation procedure to treat cystic fibrosis, emphysema and pulmonary hypertension.

When asked how he felt about his legacy of solving a great thoracic mystery, Dr. Cooper humbly answers, "We put the icing on the cake that other people had spent years and years baking. I think it was Isaac Newton coined the aphorism, 'if we see further, it's because we stand on the shoulders of giants.' Nothing, I think, typifies that more than the transplant."

TWINS WHO SMOKE LOOK OLDER

Dear Respiratory friends we are presenting new evidence about effect of smoking!!!
Twins who smoke show more premature facial aging, compared to their non-smoking identical twins, reports a study in the November issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

It is well-known that smoking is bad for you, but do you know how it affects the way you look?

Smoking causes dry skin and increases the chances of facial wrinkling. It depletes the skin of oxygen and essential nutrients.

Take a look at the pictures of these different pairs of twins and try and guess who is the smoker without looking at the captions!

The study finds significant differences in facial aging between twins with as little as five years' difference in smoking history, says a new report by ASPS Member Surgeon Dr. Bahman Guyuron, Professor and Chairman, Department of Plastic Surgery, University Hospital Case Medical and Case School of Medicine, Cleveland. The results also suggest that the effects of smoking on facial aging are most apparent in the lower two-thirds of the face.