Greater caution for COPD sufferers, advise John Hopkins experts
by admin ~ November 20th, 2009.
There has to be a greater need for caution by members of the medical fraternity while prescribing inhaled corticosteroids to patients suffering from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), according to lung disease experts at Johns Hopkins.
This call for caution came immediately after recent evidences suggested that one of the most widely used anti-inflammatory medications, inhaled corticosteroids raise the risk of pneumonia by a full third.
From News-Medical.Net:
“Physicians really need to strongly evaluate a patient’s individual characteristics before prescribing these steroid medications, and patients, in turn, should weigh the risks and benefits of taking the drugs, despite their proven record in providing symptomatic relief,” he says.
According to pulmonologist M. Brad Drummond, M.D., M.H.S., who led the study, “catching this bacterial infection can seriously disrupt quality of life, making it harder for COPD patients to breathe and possibly leading to hospitalization.”
Drummond says the new findings should serve as a reminder to people with the severe lung disease to take steps that reduce the chance of getting pneumonia, which doubles their risk of dying when compared to people with healthy lungs. He also advises COPD sufferers, in addition to weighing the benefits and harms of steroids, to get the pneumonia vaccination every five years and an annual flu vaccination because these shots reduce the chance of getting a lung infection.
It was remarked by Drummond that lung disease patients must observe additional precautions such as regular washing of hands to ensure that they lead a healthy life besides saying that further research is still needed to provide greater relief to the sufferers of COPD.
It is expected that the study findings will provide a great relief to approximately 120,000 Americans fighting against COPD, a disease that is expected to become the nation’s third leading cause of death in the United States by the year 2020.
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