Today the Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Specialists bring you a comparison between two airway illnesses that are quite often confused: Asthma and COPD.
Let’s use two fictitious patients who seem to have the same symptoms. 8 year old Lauren and 51 year old Chester often endure symptoms that they seem to share:
- A Chronic cough,
- Deep Wheezing,
- Complaints of Chest tightness,
- Shortness of breath.
You might be tempted to think these two patients shared the same illness, but you would be very wrong. They actually suffer from two different airway diseases, although the two diseases share many common symptoms.
With a closer investigation, you would discover huge differences between little Lauren’s asthma and Chester’s COPD. Let’s take a look:
Experts say the big difference is in “pathophysiology.” This means patients with the two different diseases experience different physical processes that lead into the similar symptoms.
1. COPD–Look in the Blood: In Chester’s body, “Inflammation results from macrophages and neutrophils.” These are two types of white blood cells that are part of the human immune response.
2. Asthma–Look In the Airways: Lauren’s disease, asthma, stems from the fact her “airways become inflamed and irritable in response to an allergen.” As this happens during an asthma attack, she finds it increasingly difficult to move any air in and out of her lungs.
3. Years—Look at the Age of the Patient: Asthma like Lauren’s is likely to appear at any age, whereas COPD generally strikes patients at 40 years of age and older. Experts say, “the age of initial presentation is often the distinguishing feature between COPD and asthma.
“People who have asthma are typically diagnosed as children, as noted by Dr. Neil Schachter, medical director of the respiratory care department of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. On th
e other hand, COPD symptoms usually show up only in adults over the age of 40, who are current or former smokers, according to the NIH.”
4. Smoking–Look at Causes for Disease: Whereas both smokers and nonsmokers can get asthma, most of the COPD patients we see at FLASS have smoked more than a pack a day for years. The common amount of years of smoking for a COPD patient is in the 20 year range. In Chester’s case, we note that he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for 22 years before he kicked the habit. COPD can also be the result of living around secondhand smoke or having a low weight level and a virus when the patient was born. Sometimes we see COPD in patients who endured severe respiratory infections as children.
5. Unique Timing Autograph–Look at the Triggers: Lauren’s asthma attacks are set off by sensitivity to foods, irritants or pollen in the air.
“Asthma is usually made worse by exposure to allergens, cold air, and exercise, while COPD aggravations are largely caused by respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and the flu. COPD can also be made worse by exposure to environmental pollutants.”
Triggers can set off an attack at any time for Lauren, but in between these attacks, Lauren leads an otherwise healthy and active life, symptom-free.
Such is not the case for Chester. Chester’s COPD is a chronic, long-lasting, relentless disease that is making him sicker and sicker as years go on. He even had to claim early retirement because he could not breathe well enough to continue working as a master electrician.
6. Prognosis–Look at Treatment: In the final analysis, the difference between asthma and COPD is that many COPD patients must be informed of a sad truth that “chronic exposure and damage leads to airway obstruction and hyperinflation. While airflow in asthma is mostly reversible, airflow in COPD is only partially reversible.”
FLASS is aware that both asthma and COPD patients are benefiting daily from new research in the field of respiratory medicine. For some deep reading on this topic, visit this expert online resource.