The findings of health professionals are alarming: the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (or COPD) is a disease totally unknown to the general public and smokers. However, this disease is on the way to becoming the third cause of death in the world and it affects approximately 3.5 million French people. On the occasion of World COPD Day, November 20, the Fondation du Souffle conducted an OpinionWay survey to understand the knowledge of this disease. Unsurprisingly, 9 out of 10 people are unaware of COPD; 2 out of 3 people are unaware that tobacco is the main risk factor and 1 out of 2 people are unaware that the disease can be diagnosed early.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (long called chronic bronchitis) is an irreversible disease because it gradually obstructs and alters the airways. But if it is not possible to cure it, it is quite possible to stop the evolution of the disease, whatever its stage. Hence the importance of detecting it as early as possible, before the appearance of serious handicaps.
“The first signs of the disease are: shortness of breath, daily or almost daily cough, sputum and recurrent or trailing bronchitis. But only breath measurement can reliably diagnose the disease,” explains Professor Bruno Housset, head of the pulmonology department at the Center Hospitalier Intercommunal de Créteil.
When the disease is diagnosed, the main difficulty is to make the patients admit that their disease is linked to their tobacco use because most smokers associate smoking only with the risk of cancer. “For our patients, it is almost normal to cough when smoking, but this cough is not associated with a disease: for most patients, it is a simple irritation! explains Dr. Bertrand Herer, pulmonologist. The second difficulty is to make the disease and the usefulness of bronchodilators understood by increasingly young smokers, who imagined COPD as a disease linked to old age.
“Another subject of astonishment is the very great underestimation of the prevalence of the disease: three quarters of the people questioned place it at 100,000 people at most, while COPD affects 3.5 million French people. We are faced with the paradox of a frequent, serious disease, with the main risk factor clearly identified, and yet largely unknown” insists Dr. Herer who recalls that in view of the evolution of the disease, it deserves to be found its place in well-publicized diseases such as diabetes or cancer.
