Pulmonary emphysema, often referred to simply as emphysema, is a chronic lung condition that falls into a category of diseases known as COPD. As a lung condition, this disease causes shortness of breath, light headedness, and chest congestion. This disease most often afflicts people who smoke, live around lung irritants, or have other lung conditions.
As a chronic lung condition, there is no permanent cure for emphysema, so treatment revolves around slowing the disease and mitigating symptoms. The reason there is no cure is because there is no way to repair lung damage, which means you will have to learn to live with your condition.
Currently, medications are the primary treatment for emphysema. Medications help open up your airways, making it easier to breathe and reducing the amount of mucus your lungs produce.
One of the keys to breathing easier is to relax the muscles in your airways and make them wider. To do this, doctors recommend taking bronchodilators, such as albuterol or theophylline. These are typically inhaled through an inhaler and provide instant lung relief.
Another side effect of emphysema is that your lungs become inflamed and swollen. As a result, it’s harder to breathe and can cause severe shortness of breath. To aid with this issue, your doctor may prescribe steroids, such as budesonide and prednisone. Steroids reduce inflammation and open your airways and are administered orally, through an injection, or with an inhaler.
People with emphysema are at increased risk of lung infections, and when you get one, they can be very dangerous. Therefore, you will need fast and strong antibiotics to kill the bacteria causing your infection, such as cephalosporin or macrolide.
In addition to medications, pulmonary rehabilitation is another crucial treatment for people with emphysema. Pulmonary rehabilitation revolves around teaching you breathing exercises and techniques to make it easier to breathe. While this cannot heal your lungs, it can strengthen them and make breathing easier.
Although rare initially, emphysema can eventually make it extremely difficult to breathe to the point of almost passing out. To combat this, you might need emergency oxygen therapy, which consists of pressing an oxygen mask or nasal cannula to your face or nose. These assistive devices get oxygen quickly into your lungs and blood to restore normal breathing. You can receive oxygen therapy at a medical facility or at home with an oxygen tank.
If your emphysema causes enough lung damage, you may need lung reduction surgery. Lung reduction surgery is where a surgeon removes the damaged portions of your lungs. This can open up your airways and make it easier to breathe.
Another surgical remedy is to undergo bronchoscopic lung volume reduction. This procedure involves installing a valve into your lungs to make it easier for air to flow through them. The goal is to keep air from getting trapped inside your lungs and causing breathing problems.
Finally, if your lung or lungs are too damaged to salvage with medications, therapy, and minor surgery, you may require a lung transplant. With this procedure, a surgeon removes your damaged lung and implants a new one in its place. Your new lung will be from a donor and will allow you to breathe normally again.
Emphysema is a chronic lung condition that is incurable and unrepairable. Therefore, it is important to seek an early diagnosis so that you can start the appropriate treatment as quickly as possible. The proper treatment of medications, therapy, exercises, and surgery can help slow your condition and mitigate symptoms so that you can live a mostly normal life.