Medical Essay on Emphysema

Emphysema is a lungs disease that causes shortness of breath due to over irritation of the air sacs in the lungs (alveoli). Over time, the disorder damages the inner walls of air sacs making them be weak and rupture (Snider & Kleinerman & Thurlbeck & Bengali, 1985). Lack of enough air in the lungs end up forming large air space instead of normal small ones. This condition reduces the surface area of the lungs and the oxygen circulating in the bloodstream. When a person exhales, the damaged air sac falls to work correctly, and old air become trapped disallowing room of fresh oxygen to enter. The tissues that hold small airways are known as, bronchioles. Emphysema is grouped with other diseases such as, obstructive pulmonary diseases or (pulmonary refers to the lungs (COPD). This disorder affects airflow when breathing out is slowed because air sacs do not exchange gases when inhaling.

Normal and healthy lungs tissue appear like a new dry sponge but emphysematous lungs appear like a wasted sponge, and this is contributed by large holes and loss of springy-ness or elasticity in the lungs (Fichele & Woodhouse, al, 2005). During inflation, lungs stretch to circulate blood, and stretched tissue want to rest. But, in Emphysema, elastic activities are impaired resulting in air being trapped in lungs. Emphysema disease destroys spongy tissue in the lungs also impairing small vessels and airways that are found in the lungs. Emphysema has been proven to be one of the disorders leading causes of death in the United States. Unlike other colonic diseases like heart disease, COPD death rate has appeared to be increasing in the last decade. This death rate has raised concern among stakeholders in health sectors people need to understand what causes emphysema and ways to avoid.

Cigarette smoking is the most dangerous habit that contributes to the development of Emphysema among many people. Another risk factor is the deficiency of the enzyme known as, alpha one antitrypsin, and air pollution among others. Cigarette smoking destroys lung tissues that contribute to obstruction of airflow; this condition creates inflammation and irritation in the airway that can lead to more airflow obstruction.

Damaged lung tissue appears in the following ways: first, smoking cigarettes directly has a damaging effect on the cell in the airways that are useful in clearing mucus and many secretions in the body (Hensley & Coughlan & Davies & Gibson, 1999). However, continuous smoking causes dysfunction of cilia; long-term smoking makes cilia to disappear from cells lining in airways. If the cilia cannot perform its function of sweeping movement, in the lower part of the respiration tract mucus production cannot be cleared. Smoke increases the frequency of mucus generation whereas the capacity to clear the secretion is falling off. The buildup of the mucus can cause the accumulation of bacteria to increase the chance getting an infection.

Inhibition of immune cells in lungs to prevent infection can be as an impact of cigarettes smoking. A particle such as the tar contained in cigarette hinders immune cells to combat bacterial infection efficiently. Regularly the lungs are subjected to inflammation, from the action of immune cells; destructive enzymes repeatedly attack infections like bacteria (Voelkel & Tarasevicien, 2005). Released enzymes, overtime by the immune cells account to inflammation which further element to loss of protein that requires keeping the lungs elastic.

Additionally, enzymes that are produced during persistent inflammation cause the loss of the proteins that keep the lungs elastics. Also, the tissues that are responsible for separating alveoli from each other are even destroyed. Due to prolonged exposure to cigarette makes the lung elasticity to decreases, and destruction of air sac lead to lungs malfunctioning.

References

Hensley, M., Coughlan, J. L., Davies, H. R., & Gibson, P. (1999). Lung volume reduction surgery for diffuse emphysema. The Cochrane Library.

Snider, G. L., Kleinerman, J., Thurlbeck, W. M., & Bengali, Z. H. (1985). The definition of emphysema: report of a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Division of Lung Diseases workshop.

Swift, A. J., Wild, J. M., Fichele, S., Woodhouse, N., Fleming, S., Waterhouse, J., ... & Van Beek, E. J. (2005). Emphysematous changes and normal variation in smokers and COPD patients using diffusion 3 He MRI. European journal of radiology, 54(3), 352-358.

Voelkel, N., & Taraseviciene-Stewart, L. (2005). Emphysema: an autoimmune vascular disease?. Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society, 2(1), 23-25.