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Hello, my name is
Professor Ian Hall.
I'm the dean at the University
of Nottingham Medical School.
And today I'm going to talk
to you about the genetics
of chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease, or COPD.
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COPD accounts for over 900,000
patients within the UK.
30,000 people die of this
disease every year in the UK.
And the health care costs to
the National Health Service
are in the order of half
a billion pounds per year.
In the USA, in 2006, 12
million adults had COPD.
And over 670,000 hospital admissions
were recorded due to COPD.
Over 120,000 people will die of
COPD in any given year in the USA.
Globally, it is the fourth
leading cause of death
and is set to rise
to the third leading
cause of death in
the next few years.
This is partly because of the
increased life expectancy of people
in the developing world
and the onset of COPD
in people who are in
their later years.
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COPD is defined as the presence of
irreversible airflow obstruction
with a ratio between the forced
expiratory volume in one second
and the forced vital
capacity of less than 70%,
and a reduction in the FEV1 itself.
Criteria based upon the
severity of airflow obstruction
have been used for many years
to assess the severity of COPD.
These are known as
the GOLD criteria.
Although these have recently
been revised to take into
account the exacerbation
frequency in addition
to the severity of
airflow obstruction.
Histopathological changes present
in the lungs of patients with COPD
tend to show either small
airway destruction or emphysema,
or narrowing of the
small or medium-sized
airways due to chronic bronchitis.
