• Aust Fam Physician · Jul 2005

    Review

    Shortness of breath--is it chronic obstructive pulmonary disease?

    • Christine F McDonald.
    • Institute for Breathing and Sleep, Austin Hospital, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia. christine.mcdonald@autin.org.au
    • Aust Fam Physician. 2005 Jul 1; 34 (7): 541-5.

    BackgroundOf all the major diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the one for which the burden is increasing the fastest.ObjectiveThis article discusses the diagnoses and assessment of COPD, and provides management guidelines including smoking cessation, bronchodilator therapy, the use of inhaled corticosteroids, combination therapies, oxygen therapy, and rehabilitation.DiscussionDiagnosis is by clinical suspicion in patients with an appropriate clinical history and airflow obstruction is confirmed using spirometry. Although smoking cessation and oxygen in selected individuals are the only interventions known to alter the natural history of COPD, many other treatments can significantly lessen breathlessness, reduce exacerbations, and improve exercise and quality of life.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…