Introduction

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is often called COPD for short. Your doctor may also call it chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or chronic obstructive lung disease.

COPD affects your lungs. It can cause a bad cough and make you feel out of breath. It's usually caused by smoking. But whatever the cause of your COPD, giving up cigarettes can help slow down how quickly the disease gets worse. There are also treatments that will help you feel better and breathe more easily.

We've brought together the best research about COPD and weighed up the evidence about how to treat it. You can use our information to talk to your doctor and decide which treatments are best for you.

COPD is a lung disease that's usually caused by smoking. If you have a bad cough that never seems to go away, and if you get out of breath without doing very much, you may have this condition.

This condition is also known as chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or chronic obstructive lung disease.

If you have COPD and you smoke, the best thing you can do is stop smoking. This can help slow down how quickly the disease gets worse. To learn more, see Why stop smoking?

You can also take drugs to help you breathe more easily and do exercises to make you stronger and more fit. If you're underweight, eating well so that you gain weight can also help.

Key messages for people with COPD

• If you have a smoker's cough or get out of breath easily, you could have COPD.

• It's important not to ignore a cough or breathing problems. See your doctor as soon as possible.

• You can get COPD even if you gave up smoking some years ago.

• There are treatments that can help you breathe more easily and live a more active life.

• If you stop smoking, it will slow down how quickly your lungs get worse.

How your lungs work

To understand what happens in COPD and how to treat it, it helps to know something about your lungs.

Your lungs are in the centre of your chest, behind your ribs. They are like two spongy, stretchy bags that fill up with air when you breathe in and empty when you breathe out.

• When you take a breath, air travels down your windpipe and goes into your lungs.

• The air passes into your lungs through a network of thin tubes.

• These tubes are lined with fine hairs (called cilia) that help to push the air through your lungs. The hairs also help to sweep tiny specks of dust, or dirt and germs, out of your lungs.

• Your lungs make small amounts of a thick fluid, called mucus. It keeps your airways moist and helps get rid of dirt and germs.

• The air you breathe in goes into tiny sacs at the end of each airway. Your doctor may call these sacs alveoli.

• Each little sac is covered with tiny blood vessels. Oxygen from the air passes through the wall of the air sac and into your blood vessels.

• Your blood carries oxygen all around your body. Oxygen is released into your body's tissues to be used as food. After your tissues use the oxygen, waste gases pass from the tissues back to your blood.

• Your blood returns to your lungs with these waste gases. The gases move through the air sacs and back into your lungs. These are gases that your cells don't need any more, mainly carbon dioxide. When you breathe out, you get rid of these gases.