COPD: Types (Nursing)

00:00 Hi. Welcome to our respiratory video series. We're going to look at chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in this section. Now, the World Health Organization has a definition of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They define it as a lung disease characterized by chronic obstruction of lung airflow that interferes with normal breathing and is not fully reversible. Now the more familiar terms, chronic bronchitis and emphysema, are no longer used but are now included within the COPD diagnosis. I wanted to start out with this because this is a definition from the World Health Organization. They're a major player in health obviously all over the world. So their definition says these terms are kind of outdated but you're going to see these terms used a lot in healthcare. So we're showing you this definition and some other definitions to help kind of clear that up. Now if you've been exposed to discussions about COPD before, you know that you see the healthy tissue there, there's the bronchiole, you see the smooth muscle wrapped around it, you also have smooth muscle in the wall of the bronchioles, and you've got the alveoli there. Now if they're healthy alveoli, you see they're round, they're intact, and that's where we have the exchange of CO2 and O2. Because those alveoli are surrounded by capillaries. You don't see the capillaries in that drawing but they're there in your body. Now, when you look at COPD, you have some problems with extra mucus and alveolar walls that are damaged and that's why they have the respiratory problems that they do. So, this is the World Health Organization's definition of COPD. That second point there we talked about chronic bronchitis and emphysema are no longer used, I'm letting you know that in the states they really are. So we've got that there, just be aware that this is kind of a conversation in healthcare. Now the US, that's just us, the US National Institute of Health says there are 2 main forms of COPD, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Now that seems to be a little bit of a conflict with what you talked about with World Health but I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it. I just wanted to explain it to you. So chronic bronchitis is when they have a lot of extra mucus and a long-term cough. In order for it to be chronic, you've had it over 2 years for at least 3 months in each year. Emphysema is damage to the alveolar walls. So you end up with these walls that are blown up. So chronic bronchitis, gunked up; emphysema, blown up. Now most people with COPD have kind of both which is probably why the World Health Organization has done away with separating these 2, but we're going to continue discussing it from this perspective and it lines up with the United States NIH definition. Now there's a copdfoundation.org. There's a lot of great information there. There are non-profit organization. They look at COPD as an umbrella term. It's used to describe progressive lung diseases including emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and refractory or non-reversible asthma.

03:09 So, this disease is characterized by increasing breathlessness. So there's another perspective for you when we talk about COPD. So you know be flexible when you're discussing it and what perspective you're aware of.