Raymond Durrance, age 14, of Great Falls, Mont., for his question:
CAN EMPHYSEMA BE CURED?
Emphysema is a lung disease in which the patient has great difficulty exhaling his breath. Other symptoms include frequent colds and coughing, excess mucus in the throat, indigestion and shortness of breath.
Medical experts report that emphysema cannot be cured. However, victims who receive early treatment may have long and reasonably active lives.
Drugs and hormones help many emphysema patients. Air pumps, which force pure oxygen into the lungs, and sometimes lung surgery are used to help other patients.
Doctors don't know exactly what causes emphysema. However, they know most cases start with a lung infection called chronic bronchitis. Air pollution and cigarette smoking is often the apparent cause. The illness most frequently strikes males over the age of 40.
More than a million people in the United States and Canada have emphysema. In the early 1970s, the disease was increasing faster among Americans than any other major ailment. The disease killed about 30,000 Americans in 1970, compared with fewer than 1,500 in 1950.
Emphysema damages the small air sacs in the lungs through which oxygen enters the blood and carbon dioxide leaves it. Some emphysema victims have bluish skin because their blood contains too little oxygen.
Emphysema may destroy as much as half the ability of the lungs to function before the victim even realizes that something is seriously wrong. Such lung tissue damage makes the lungs less elastic and some carbon dioxide remains in them after each exhalation.
The carbon dioxide poisons the body and takes up space usually occupied by inhaled oxygen. The victim must breathe increasingly harder to get normal amounts of oxygen into his lungs.
In addition, the victim's heart must pump harder to get enough oxygen into the blood.
Because the emphysema victim must breathe increasingly harder to get a normal amount of oxygen into his lungs, many develop heart ailments that can cause death.
Most emphysema victims work or live in areas with heavy air pollution. When air stagnates in such an area, an emphysema epidemic may result. Such epidemics have happened in London and in the industrial valleys of Belgium and Pennsylvania.
About 13 times as many smokers as nonsmokers get emphysema.
Heredity may also be a factor in the disease. About a fourth of the victims lack an enzyme called alpha antitrypsin, which protects the lungs against infection.
Many emphysema victims have large but inefficient lungs and look barrel chested.
Doctors offer an easy to follow suggestion for young people as a way of taking an early measure in the prevention of emphysema: don't take up smoking.