Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD.

If you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow along at zero definals.com slash COPD or in the respiratory section of the

zero definals medicine book. So let's get straight into it. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

or COPD is a non-reversible long-term deterioration in airflow through the lungs, which is caused by damage to the lung tissue.

This lung damage is almost always the result of smoking, and the damage to the lung tissue

causes an obstruction of flow of air through the airways, which makes it more difficult to

ventilate the lungs and makes them very

prone to developing infections. Unlike asthma, the obstruction of flow of air through the airways

is not significantly reversible with bronchodilators, such as salbutamol. Patients are susceptible to what we

call exacerbations of COPD during which there's a

worsening of their lung function, and exacerbations are often triggered by infections,

and these are called infective exacerbations of COPD.

So what's the presentation?

We should suspect COPD in a long-term smoker who's presenting with

chronic shortness of breath, chronic cough, production of sputum, wheeze and recurrent

respiratory tract infections, particularly in winter. And always consider the differential

diagnoses of lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis or heart failure,

as these also affect this type of person with a similar presentation. It's important to remember that

COPD does not cause finger clubbing and it's unusual for COPD to cause hemoptosis or coughing up blood,

and it doesn't usually cause chest pain,

so these symptoms should alert you to a possible different diagnosis.

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