BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterised by the presence of airflow limitation caused by loss of lung elasticity and/or airway narrowing. The pathological hallmark of loss of lung elasticity is emphysema, and airway wall remodelling contributes to the airway narrowing. Using CT, these lesions can be assessed by measuring low attenuation areas (LAA) and airway wal...

Pulmonary emphysema, together with chronic bronchitis is a part of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and worldwide. There are many methods to diagnose emphysema. Unfortunately many of them, for example pulmonary function tests (PFTs), clinical signs and conventional radiology are able to detect emphysema usually in its...

BACKGROUND Factors determining the shape of the human rib cage are not completely understood. We aimed to quantify the contribution of anthropometric and COPD-related changes to rib cage variability in adult cigarette smokers. METHODS Rib cage diameters and areas (calculated from the inner surface of the rib cage) in 816 smokers with or without COPD, were evaluated at three anatomical levels ...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/emphysema (COPD/emphysema) is characterized by chronic inflammation and premature lung aging. Anti-aging sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), a NAD+-dependent protein/histone deacetylase, is reduced in lungs of patients with COPD. However, the molecular signals underlying the premature aging in lungs, and whether SIRT1 protects...

The contribution of emphysema to lung cancer risk has been recognized, but the effect size needs to be further defined. In this study, 565 primary lung cancer cases were enrolled though a prospective lung cancer cohort at Mayo Clinic, and 450 controls were smokers participating in a lung cancer screening study in the same institution using spiral computed tomography (CT). Cases and controls wer...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the commonest reasons for ill health worldwide, with 16 million individuals affected in the USA alone. It is ranked as the fourth and fifth highest cause of death in the USA and UK, respectively, with a mortality rate at least 14 times that of asthma. 2 The single most important factor in the development of emphysema is cigarette smoke. Inh...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the commonest reasons for ill health worldwide, with 16 million individuals affected in the USA alone. It is ranked as the fourth and fifth highest cause of death in the USA and UK, respectively, with a mortality rate at least 14 times that of asthma. 2 The single most important factor in the development of emphysema is cigarette smoke. Inh...

Emphysema is often distributed heterogeneously throughout the lungs, even at the segmental level. It is important for interventional lung volume reduction therapies to target and treat the most diseased regions of the lung while preserving the less diseased functional regions. Identification and determination of the severity of emphysema can be done using the various quantification measures rev...

BACKGROUND Mortality related to asthma has decreased worldwide since the introduction of inhaled corticosteroid therapy in the past decades. However, there are still some asthma fatalities identified mainly in populations with less access to regular treatment. Pulmonary interstitial emphysema due to alveolar rupture has been rarely described as a complication of an acute severe asthma attack, a...

OBJECTIVE Patients with lung emphysema show increased aerosol-derived dimensions of peripheral airspaces and increased aerosol bolus dispersion (AD). To apply these tests in epidemiologic studies, the objective of this pilot study was to investigate whether morphometric changes caused by lung fibrosis can be distinguished from those caused by emphysema. DESIGN This study was designed as a cro...