Medpedia

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is an incurable lung disease that worsens over time. Primarily caused by long-term cigarette smoking, COPD encompasses both emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Once you’ve been diagnosed with COPD, the most important action you can take is to make the necessary lifestyle changes that will keep your lungs and body as healthy as possible.

Friends and family will want to know how they can help support and take care of you. And they’ll want to know the facts about your COPD diagnosis and prognosis to better understand what you’re going through. To start, loved ones will need to understand that as a COPD patient, you may have difficulty breathing, which can make physical activities such as house chores and playing with children challenging.

"The prognosis is pretty variable," says Daniel Culver, DO, a staff physician in the department of pulmonary, allergy, and critical care medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. "It depends on how severe the COPD is. Some people with very mild COPD, if they can stop smoking and take care of themselves, shouldn't have any sort of shortened life expectancy. People who have more moderate or severe disease or who developed the disease at an earlier age tend to have more problems as they get older." This is because lung capacity can diminish with age

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