The influence of smoking on the lung function parameters in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has the prevalence of 6-14% in the whole population. COPD is the forth most common cause of death worldwide. It is expected to become the third most common cause by the year 2020. Tobacco smoke, the most important environmental risk factor for the development of COPD, is a mixture of more than 4000 different compounds, many of which are carcinogenic or irritative. Tobacco has been shown to cause about twenty five life-threatening diseases or groups of diseases, many of which can be prevented, delayed or mitigated by smoking cessation. Unfortunately, the number of smokers is still increasing in many developing and developed countries, especially among females. If only small portion of today’ s 1,1 billion smokers were able to stop smoking, long-term health and economic benefits would be immense. According to this data, the authors set the goal to investigate the parameters of lung function in patients with COPD, who are smokers and non-smokers. The retrospective randomized diagnostic study enrolled 60 patients (36 m. and 24 f.) treated ambulatory during exacerbations of COPD, being divided in two groups - 30 smokers and 30 non-smokers. The resulting spirometric parameters of lung function (FEV1/FVC, FEV1, FVC), according to GOLD criteria, were analyzed. Smokers with COPD have statistically significant decline of the parameters than non- smokers with COPD. Smokers who smoke less than 10 years have significantly better FEV1/FVC, FEV1 and FVC than smokers who smoke for more than 20 years. It may be concluded that smoking as a risk factor significantly influences the impairment of the lung function parameters, proportionally to the duration of smoking history compared to non-smokers. Patients with COPD should be encouraged to stop smoking, which significantly increases the survival rate, even in patients with very low value of FEV1.