Breathing Easier With Emphysema

Reported April 2006

BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Breathing seems easy, but it's not if you have emphysema -- shortness of breath becomes a way of life. Now, patients with emphysema are breathing better thanks to a new way to fight this deadly lung disease.

Martine Cantler has emphysema. It makes breathing hard and doing simple household chores even harder. "Carrying things up and down the stairs had become almost impossible to do," Cantler says.

Emphysema causes air to get trapped in the lungs and blow up like a balloon, hogging space for healthy lung tissue to work. Thanks to a new therapy called an endo-bronchial valve procedure breathing is no longer a problem for Cantler. "I can carry a huge bag of laundry upstairs."

Mark Krasna, M.D., a thoracic surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, says, "It's going to make the patient breath easier because it helps the mechanics of their breathing when they breathe and expand and contract."

Thoracic surgeons place the tiny valve inside the lungs using a broncho-scope. Exhaling opens the valve, releasing trapped air, and inhaling prevents its return. The valve deflates the diseased parts of the lung, making space for healthy lung tissue to work.

"I think this is going to be a really revolutionary therapy for patients with emphysema," Dr. Krasna says.

The valve procedure is a non-surgical, less-risky treatment for emphysema than traditional therapies like lung-reduction surgery. It has not yet been FDA approved.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Dr. Mark Krasna
University of Maryland Medical Center
Baltimore, MD
410-328-UMMS (8667)

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