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【medical-news】报告声称肺癌已是女性重要疾病
Report warns lung disease 'crucial' female issue
Updated Wed. Nov. 15 2006 3:11 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Doctors are warning in a report released Wednesday that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has emerged as a "crucial women's health issue," but that screening remains unacceptably low.
The report released by the Canadian Lung Association says that more than 425,000 women in Canada have been diagnosed with this respiratory disease and more than 4,300 die every year.
COPD is an umbrella term for respiratory diseases that include bronchitis and emphysema, which cause the airways of the lung to be inflamed and become blocked.
"Canadians need to recognize that the face of COPD has truly changed and we will be seeing more and more women living with and dying from this disease," said Dr. Anna Day, director of the Gender Asthma and COPD Program at Women's College Hospital in Toronto.
The authors of the report, which was released on World COPD Day, say that while COPD affects 3.8 per cent of men, it affects 4.8 per cent of women.
"The prevalence of smoking has gone down from 50 per cent to about 23 per cent and that's terrific news. But at the same time, we're seeing that the mortality rates and hospitalization rates for women with COPD is increasing so that around 2004 and 2005, more women died of COPD than men in Canada," Day, who consulted for the report on behalf of the Canadian Thoracic Society, told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday.
Since 2000, female mortality due to COPD has risen by nine per cent while female stroke-related deaths have decreased by 2.7 per cent.
While screening such as mammography, pap tests or bone density testing have become routinely standard for other diseases, the report shows that appropriate screening for COPD is "unacceptably low."
The authors of the report hope it will serve as a grim reminder for women at risk to ask their physicians for spirometry, a simple breathing test, which is essential to the early diagnosis of COPD.
"If we have the information that someone is losing lung function quickly, I think we really are more inclined to put our resources into helping them stop smoking," Day said.
"Furthermore, we now have therapies that weren't available even five years ago that can make people feel better and may also change the deterioration in the disease, and we need to start using those."
Research has shown that the effects of women seem to have a greater impact on women's lung health, said Dr. Denis O'Donnell, professor of medicine at Kingston, Ontario's Queen's University.
"Perhaps due to smaller lung capacity, airways and ventilatory muscle mass, women report worse symptoms for similar severity of COPD," he said in a written statement.
Day says doctors are concerned there may be two reasons why doctors are seeing an increasing mortality rate among female smokers.
"One is that biologically, they may be more susceptible to damage from smoking and we don't really know that. We have to do the research," Day said.
"The other part is that they're not being diagnosed early enough and being offered smoking cessation counselling and the therapies that we now have to prevent the disease from progressing to the point that they need oxygen."
Day said there's a tendency to discount complaints of shortness of breath in women over 40.
"It comes on slowly, it often comes in the 50s when they may have put on some weight. They may not be active, and they themselves dismiss the shortness of breath. They're not even going to tell their doctor," she said.
The main symptoms experienced by patients with COPD are shortness of breath and limitation of activity. Doctors say that COPD is primarily caused by smoking and that only a small percentage of patients have the respiratory disease because of other conditions.
The report was developed by the Canadian Lung Association in collaboration with its medical and health professional groups, the Canadian Thoracic Society and Canadian Respiratory Health Professionals.
With a report from CTV's medical specialist Avis Favaro and medical producer Elizabeth St. Philip 本人已经认领此文. 如在48小时内未能提交译文, 其他战友可自由认领. 题目：应该注意肺病（COPD）已成为女性主要易患疾病
加拿大电视台新闻：周三报道认为慢性阻塞性肺病（COPD）已经成为主要威胁女性健康的疾病，但是其筛查标准仍然不清。加拿大肺相关疾病协会认为在加拿大每年有超过42.5万人被确诊，并且每年有4300人死于此病。
COPD是呼吸疾病的一个涵盖性术语，它包括支气管炎和肺气肿等使肺通道感染和阻塞的疾病。
多伦多女子大学哮喘和COPD计划的主管Anna Day博士认为加拿大人应该认识到COPD的情况正在改变。我们将看到越来越多的女性得病或死于此病，COPD的男性的发病率为3.8%，女性发病率为4.8%。
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2010-10-09 17:11
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