Bronchial respiratory deficiency, asthmatic bronchitis, asthma… in fifteen years of follow-up by her general practitioner and a pulmonologist, Sylviane A. heard several names of pathologies supposed to explain what she was suffering from. During these fifteen years, she therefore followed without flinching the long-term treatments prescribed to her and carried out the measurements of her respiratory and expiratory capacities without ever mentioning the diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)).
“And then over time my respiratory capacity deteriorated. At the start of 2015, I had much more debilitating bronchitis than the previous ones. My general practitioner having retired, I consulted a young doctor who immediately addressed to one of his fellow pulmonologists. And that’s when I heard, for the first time, the word COPD. For the pulmonologist, it was obvious. I was flabbergasted” explains Sylviane A.
Women still underdiagnosed
For years, the typical COPD patient has been “a man over 50, smoker or ex-smoker, who spits and coughs” according to Pr Chantal Raherison, pulmonologist and member of the French-speaking Pneumology Society (SPLF). Until the generation of baby-boom women, who demanded the right to smoke along with the right to take the pill as signs of emancipation, in turn discovered the consequences of smoking about health. Today, one in two patients with COPD is a woman. But women are still underdiagnosed.
“During the 15 years of consultation, despite my bouts of spasmodic coughing, frequent choking, asthmatic bronchitis, no one ever told me about COPD. But above all, no one explained to me that what I suffer from is direct consequence of smokingand tobacco only makes it worse. Today I suffer from stage 3 COPD, that is to say that I only have 40% of my respiratory capacity left, but before meeting this pulmonologist, no one told me “It is vital to quit smoking and we will help you“.
Smoking cessation should be accompanied
Today Sylviane can no longer ride a bike, swim, walk faster… Climbing a flight of stairs in the metro seems to her as difficult as climbing a mountain. “Each effort causes terrible muscle pain. I suffocate, I vomit, I can pass out”.
The pulmonologist was clear: if she continues, she won’t be there in 3 years. Stop smoking is therefore his priority. But she saw, once again, the isolation of “COPD women”. She knows that she will not be able to quit smoking without being accompanied. But, for the moment, she has not found a tobacco specialist who is aware of her illness and who takes into account her purely feminine fears: “Behind smoking cessation, in addition to the difficulty of breaking an addiction, there is also the fear of gaining weight. And this is what makes smoking cessation difficult or even impossible to do, without being accompanied by someone with the right argument”.
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COPD: the forgotten part of the anti-tobacco plan