Emphysema Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Emphysema - Research Paper Example agree to National Institute of Health, NIH (2014), COPD encompasses varied lung diseases that include emphysema, chronic obstructive airways disease and chronic bronchitis. This paper focuses on emphysema, the main type of COPD as noted by Klaassen (2013). Emphysema is a type of chronic lung disease. It ordinarily causes people to have breathing difficulties due to blowing out air being limited and majorly affects people amid the ages of 45 and 60 (NIH, 2014). It is estimated that over 10 million people in America are apt(predicate) to have emphysema with 2011 having had 4.7 million Americans diagnosed with the condition according to statistics from the American Lung Association (2013). Historically, men exhibit higher(prenominal) prevalence for emphysema than women, though the past five years has seen the prevalence in women increase by 63% while prevalence among men has decreased by 6%. Together with bronchitis, emphysema is graded fourth amon g the leading causes of death in America, killing about 16,242 people every year.The pathogenesis of emphysema more often than not remains unclear. However, it has been generally accepted that emphysema occurs when delicate linings of air sacs which occur in the lungs get irreversibly damaged. It involves the inflammatory changes that occur in small airways accompanied by loss of small vessels and alveolar septal structures. This, according to NIH (2014), occurs due to gradual destruction of air sacs in the lungs making the patient slowly disadvantaged of breath. There is also the postulate by Nici and ZuWallack (2012) that emphysema results from protease-antiprotease imbalance. For proper maintenance of lungs, there needs to be a delicate balance in the activity of protease and antiprotease. Interference with this balance results to lungs being destruct or inappropriately repaired, eventually leading to emphysema. Additionally, the destruction of elastin fragments resulting