What Goes Wrong With the Lungs and Other Organs
in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease?
The most important job that the lungs perform is to provide
the body with oxygen and to remove carbon dioxide. This
process is called gas exchange, and the normal anatomy of
the lungs serves this purpose well. The lungs contain 300
million alveoli whose ultrathin walls form the gas exchange
surface. Enmeshed in the wall of each of these air sacs
is a network of tiny blood vessels, the capillaries, which
bring blood to the gas exchange surface.
 read
more
|
How Is Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Detected?
Researchers are still looking for accurate methods to predict
a person's chances of developing airway obstruction. None
of the current ways used to diagnose COPD detects the disease
before irreversible lung damage occurs. While many measures
of lung function have been developed, those most commonly
used determine: 1) air-containing volume of the lung (lung
volume), 2) the ability to move air into and out of the
lung, 3) the rate at which gases diffuse between the lung
and blood, and 4) blood levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
read
more
|
