By: Jahangeer Ganaie
Srinagar, Nov 16: The prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in J&K is increasing with each passing day and quitting smoking can help in prevention of COPD, Kashmir’s leading medicos said on Wednesday.
Dr Nisar Ul Hasan, Influenza expert and President Doctors Association of Kashmir told news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), that majority of the patients especially in causality in winters in major hospitals are of COPD and Asthma patients and major cause behind it is smoking.
He said that there are many people who don’t smoke but they too end up in hospitals with COPD because of the environmental pollution as there is huge pollution in kashmir because of combustion and industrialization besides that due to burning of wood, kerosene in homes, biomass fuels, charcoal in Kangris, the air quality in Kashmir has been reported to be worse than that of the metropolitan cities.
The doctor said that there will be significant improvement in respiratory disease cases if there is reduction in smoking and improvement in air quality of Kashmir for which government has to chip in and take steps to make air clean.
“There are genetic factors and IV drug users who have vascular problems also get this irreversible disease,” he said.
Dr Nisar said that there are several important risk factors for COPD which includes lifestyle, age, socioeconomic class, family clustering and lung infections besides inhaling of toxic components.
“Lifestyle modifications that can help prevent COPD, or improve function in COPD patients, include quitting smoking, avoiding respiratory irritants and infections, avoiding allergens, maintaining good nutrition, drinking lots of fluids, avoiding excessively low or high temperatures and very high altitudes, maintaining proper weight, and exercising to increase muscle tone,” he said. “Once a person gets this disease it is irreversible and a progressive course and in winters they get infections which brings them to the hospital and those infections need to be prevented by giving flu vaccination, Covid booster every year and pneumococcal vaccines and H influenza vaccine after every five years so that such patients can remain stable in winters.”
He said that many patients have severe disease and they need round the clock oxygen and there are some patients who need lung transplantation but unfortunately in Kashmir there is no such unit. “Need of the hour is to establish lung transplantation facility here,” he said. “Lung transplant remains the most common worldwide indication for lung transplantation and it is the only effective treatment for an advanced end stage lung disease which will increase the survival in these patients, improve the functional thing and quality of life.”
He said that a lung transplant is an operation to remove and replace a diseased lung with a healthy human lung from a donor. “A donor is usually a person who’s died, but in rare cases a section of lung can be taken from a living donor,” he said, “there can be single lung transplantation also but usually the long term effective outcome is with bilateral lung transplant.”
Dr Naveed Nazir Shah, head of department at CD hospital Srinagar told KNO that the incidence of COPD is very high in Kashmir and it is more than rest of the parts of country.
“COPD is a lifelong disease but winter and the pollution aggravates the situation for these patients which increases the footfall of these patients in hospital in winter months,” he said. “Majority of the COPD patients are smokers so the best prevention is not to smoke and there is need of awareness so that people quit smoking at an earliest and can be prevented from COPD and most people are being diagnosed of COPD after age of 45 but till then they have been smoking for 20 years already but it is better to convince to quit smoking as soon as possible.”
He said COPD patients shouldn’t sit in overcrowded rooms and there should be a proper ventilation system in the room besides that people should prefer a balanced diet and the water should be increased in winters
The first World COPD Day was held in 2002. Every year awareness programs are being organised for COPD awareness and educate people about its diagnosis, symptoms, preventions and treatments and the 2022 theme for World COPD Day is “Your Lungs for Life”, he said—(KNO)
