Okay, so COPD stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
It’s something that you’
re gonna see very often and it s something, it s a very interesting condition, and we
re gonna talk about it. We re gonna tell you some things that isn t really taught to you
in nursing school and isn t talked to you as a nurse. And unfortunately, because of
this, we fail as nurses to provide the best care that our patients need and we actually
put our patients in a very unsafe positions because we don t fully understand COPD. So,
what s COPD is, it s an obstruction of air flow oftentimes due to emphysema and chronic
bronchitis. Okay, so, what happens is, we have this obstruction of airflow, and most
common cause of that is emphysema and chronic bronchitis. So, what is emphysema? Emphysema
is the destruction of the alveoli due to chronic inflammation and decrease surface area for
gas exchange. A common cause of this is smoking. Okay, so, our alveoli become just destructed
or ruined and of course, gas exchange occurs in the alveoli. So, if alveoli are ruined,
we re unable to have that gas exchange, okay. And then, chronic bronchitis is chronic airway
inflammation with a productive cough and excessive sputum production. So, if, first of all, we
have this destroyed alveoli, so, we re not exchanging gas appropriately, and then we
also have this excessive sputum production and airway inflammation, so, it becomes very
difficult for these patients to breathe.
Okay, so, let s look at this picture really quick. Really quickly, so this will be a normal
alveoli, here s our bronchiole leading to our alveoli, and you can see in our normal
alveoli, we have plenty of space for air to exchange. What happens in emphysema, is these
alveoli become disrupted and airway or gas exchange does not happen as it should in a
healthy individual. So, the patient is not able to swap CO2 for O2. And, obviously, because
of this, they re going to have higher levels of CO2, okay? So, what would happen in here?
Normally is we have all these CO2 from our blood, right? And so, the CO2 is gonna pass
through here, and what s gonna happen is, we re gonna push O2 into our bloodstream and
we re gonna take the CO2 out and of course, CO2 is gonna go out as we expire. But, what
happens with emphysema, is because they have these destroyed alveoli, the gas exchange
is not happening as it should. And so, CO2 is remaining in the blood stream whereas,
you know, an O2 is not being moved into the blood. So, because of that, the patient has
elevated CO2 levels, and what happens is, is they become accommodated to that elevated
CO2. Okay, they have this mismatch of oxygen or the oxygen isn t perfusing this much. Mismatch
isn t gonna be cute, right? And so, we re gonna get into that a bunch later. But then,
what happens with bronchitis here is you can see this inflammation occurs, and then what
happens is, we also have all these excessive mucus production. So, already, they re not
able to exchange gas as they should, but they also have this excessive mucus production,
which makes them even harder for them to breathe.
Hey, guys, it s Jon from NRSNG.com. Thanks for stopping by and checking out our youtube
channel. Be sure to subscribe to find out all of our new videos as they come out. Listen,
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