Archive for the 'Respiratory Disorders' Category

Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that mainly starts in your lungs or lymph nodes.

If it becomes persistent, then it becomes more potent to affect any organ in your body including skin, nervous system, eyes, heart and also liver.

This inflammation mainly involves production of tiny lumps of cells in different organs of your body.

These lumps are mainly known as granulomas, because they look more like grains of sand or sugar. These granules like lumps are very small and can be visible only with a microscope.

The symptoms of sarcoidosis mainly depend on the organs that are affected by the inflammation. Some of you can develop the symptoms in specific part of your body like shortness of breath due to lung problems and others can experience vague symptoms. In certain cases, it doesn’t show any signs of the disease.

Early diagnosis can be helpful to prevent complications involved in sarcoidosis!

Sarcoidosis mainly affects your lungs and sometimes you will not feel the symptoms of the disease, until the disease is recognized in your regular chest x-ray. If the inflammation reaches the advanced stage, then it can end up with a cough, which persists for a long time and you can also experience shortness of breath.

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Are you suffering with any heart disease? Then you can be at increased risk of developing pulmonary edema.

Pulmonary edema is usually associated with heart problem and involves accumulation of fluid and swelling in your lungs.

Human lungs contain large number of tiny elastic air sacs, which normally exchange gases involved in respiration without any problem. But, sometimes, as the pressure in your blood vessels is increased, your lungs are forced to pump certain kind of fluid into these air sacs and prevent them from exchanging oxygen, which results in pulmonary edema.

Most of the cases involving heart disease are mainly due to pulmonary edema. But, the accumulation of fluid can be due to many other reasons such as pneumonia, exposure of your blood vessels to certain toxins and medications and also due to excessive exercising or living at extreme elevations.

Depending up on the reason to develop pulmonary edema, the signs and symptoms to identify the problem usually appear suddenly or it can also be developed gradually over weeks or months.

You can experience these manifestations if the attack is sudden:

• One can experience difficulty in breathing or extreme shortness of breath.

Have you ever heard about “water in the lungs”, also called pleural effusion?

In general, very few amounts of pleural fluid are present in the pleural spaces of your lungs. This fluid is not detectable by your regular health check up or by any routine methods.

When this accumulation of fluid is high in between pleural spaces, then it can lead to several heart or lung disorders such as pleural effusion.

Pleura are the thin membranes that are normally lined to your lungs and also inside your chest cavity. These membranes contain fluids that act as lubrication and also help in the respiration process.

When the accumulation of pleural fluid is more inside these spaces, then it can interfere in the normal functioning of your chest and lungs and results in pleural effusion.

Pleural effusions are very common and according to the estimation given by national cancer institute of United States, approximately 100, 000 are diagnosed with this disorder every year.

Depending on the reason for the accumulation of the fluid, the excess fluid in your pleural spaces is distinguished as either protein poor called transudative or protein rich also known as exudative. These two categories of fluid are very helpful for the physicians to determine the main causes for pleural effusion.

Have you ever experienced choking? It is mostly caused when any object or food particle gets lodged into your windpipe, blocking the flow of air.

In adults, often any piece of food is suspected to be a main culprit, while most of the young children swallow certain tiny objects unknowingly, which can lead to choking.

If a person is not able to show any sign of choking attack, then you can look for these simple indications:

• Coughing forcefully
• Experiencing difficulty in respiration and even unable to talk
• Change in the color of skin, nails and lips into blue or dusky
• Loss of consciousness

Necessary steps to follow for choking:

As the choking interrupts the supply of oxygen to your brain, administering first aid as soon as possible can be helpful for you.

Knowledge of certain tips regarding the first aid, which you can do in case any of your neighbors or friends experience choking, can be a good quality for you. Some of the most important tips involved in the first aid process of choking mainly include:

A cough that usually carries up yellowish-gray or green mucus and persists for three or more months, then it is a dangerous sign of chronic bronchitis. Release or production of mucus is quite normal.

The airways involved in your respiratory system normally produce certain amounts of mucus every day and these secretions are not accumulated. Rather, they continuously clear into your throat and swallowed with saliva.

If there is an inflammation in your main air passages of your lungs, they often produce huge amounts of discolored mucus that comes up with your cough.

Discolored mucus associated with the cough often refers to a secondary infection in your respiratory organs, which can lead to a life threatening problem for you.

Chronic bronchitis must be necessarily treated if air passage restriction is present within your lungs. The only way for you to get rid of this lung inflammation is stop smoking.

It can be the best treatment for this kind of lung disorder. If the inflammation is in advanced stage, then you will be treated with oxygen therapy.

Some of the other treatments involved in chronic bronchitis are outlined here:

The main symptom of lung disease is lungs do not work properly.

There are different types of lung diseases such as obstructive, restrictive and difficulty in moving oxygen from lung’s air sac into your blood.

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis – A most common lung disease in pregnant women

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) is a progressively deadly lung disease that mostly affects women in their child bearing stage.

Diagnosing this disease is very difficult because most of the early symptoms of LAM are similar to other lung diseases like asthma, bronchitis or emphysema.

LAM is characterized by an unusual type of smooth muscle cell that invades tissues of the lungs. As the time goes on, the LAM cells create holes in the lungs thus restricting the lungs from transforming oxygen to other parts of the body and making your breathing a daily battle.

VEGF-D Serum Test:
VEFG is vascular endothelial growth factor and is a main angiogenic growth factor which is produced by malignant cells. VEGF-D Serum Test is clinically helpful diagnostic test for LAM.

Smoking women can be at an increased risk of lung disease:

Smoking offers a greater risk, especially women suffering from COPD. This is the fourth leading cause of death in US.

Pleurisy is often heard from the people who are suffering from acute chest problem.

In medical terms, when the two double membranes that lines the chest cavity and surrounding the lungs get inflammable, it can cause pleurisy.

These membranes are like satin clothes rubbing each other when the lung expand and contract while breathing.

But in the case of pleurisy these satin membranes due to inflammation make themselves rough, irregular and crisscrossing among each other leading the breathing harder and creating a sharp pain at the area of intersection. Almost every time you breathe, the pain can be felt.

Pleurisy connected to Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE):

SLE is also a self immune disease (where the body attacks itself) causing the tissues inflammable and swollen, but it’s not contagious.

The cause of pleurisy is perfectly not known, but it can cause due to viral infection affecting the pleura, a blood clot in the lung or an auto immune disease where the body attacks it self.

Hidden cause of pleurisy:

The exact cause is not known but some underlying medical conditions state that this is caused due to

• Acute viral infections such as influenza

There is no cure for cystic fibrosis, except to control the symptoms.

Oral, intravenous, or inhaled antibiotics will be given to treat this infection, either chronic or acute.

Other cystic fibrosis treatments involve treatment with enzyme replacement for pancreatic disease, insulin for diabetes [diabetes causes], and advanced reproductive methods for infertility.

If pneumonia is suspected in cystic fibrosis patients or if there is decline in lung function then antibiotics are used to treat the condition based on prior infections.

Since many bacteria in CF are resistant to numerous antibiotics, treatment for weeks with intravenous antibiotics such as vancomycin, tobramycin, and ciprofloxacin are required.

Inhalation therapy with antibiotics like tobramycin for months will be given to improve the lung function by inhibiting the growth of bacteria. Oral antibiotics like ciprofloxacin and azithromycin are also used to prevent and control the infection.

Other methods of treatment in cystic fibrosis include percussive therapy such as ThAIRapy Vest and Intrapulmonary Percussive Ventilation and Biphasic Cuirass Ventilation.

When lung function and exercise tolerance decreases significantly in individuals with cystic fibrosis, lung transplantation is necessary. In patients with cystic fibrosis, both lungs need to be transplanted since if one lung is replaced, the other lung that contains bacteria will infect this replaced lung.

You suffer from acute bronchitis attacks with fever, coughing and spitting when you have severe cold.

If you have coughing and spitting for several months and if the symptoms return every year, you have chronic bronchitis.

Bronchitis and cigarette smoking:

Cigarette smoking is the major cause of chronic bronchitis. When you inhale cigarette smoke into the lungs, it irritates the airways and produce mucus.

Mucus blocks your airways and makes it difficult to get air into the lungs. Chronic bronchitis can cause a phlegm producing cough, breathing difficulty and tightness in the chest.

Doctor can easily diagnose chronic bronchitis, if you are a smoker. He/she may conduct test to see whether your lungs are damaged by blowing into a machine in order to test how much air is in the lungs.

If you are suffering with chronic bronchitis, you should stop smoking immediately to allow your lungs to heal. If you give up smoking, you can breathe more easily.

You can use inhalers that contain medicine which helps to open the airways of the lungs to treat the condition. Your doctor also prescribes pills or steroids to decrease the symptoms of bronchitis.

20% of lung cancers are occurring due to three genes which are present in your body.

These 3 genes appear to work together and they are linked to fetal lung development.

The genes which are designated to promote lung cancer are TTF1, NKX2-8, and PAX9.

The growth of tumor can be prevented by blocking the mutations of these three genes.

These genes are located next to each other in human chromosome 14. Out of these three genes, two genes play a key role or responsible in fetal lung development.

In adults, the lung cancer cells can reactivate genes and they will be active in the earliest stage of lung development. The facts such as they are so close to each other on the chromosome and the collaboration of these genes may explain why the mutation of three genes is so common in lung cancer.

The latest study found that the mutation will be more prevalent in the late stage of lung cancer and there is a possibility or risk factor of reoccurrence. The research also demonstrates or reveals that the cancerous results of mutation can be reversed. This can lead to new treatment options for the patients who are suffering with this lung cancer.