My name is Gerard Cox. I work here at
the Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health
at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton with a
specific interest in pulmonary fibrosis.
the next step after we consider the
diagnosis is to understand how it's
affecting the loans really do two things
that take care in and out and secondly
they transfer gases from the air to the
blood which are the oxygen or carbon
dioxide from the blood into the air
because carbon dioxide is a waste
product of you being almost being alive
oxygen is more transfers more effective
than carbon dioxide transfer so the
first thing we look for is your oxygen
levels we look for those at rest which
is very simple
that's enough symmetry reading on the
finger now we look at auction levels
during exercise to see that they drop
wal-mart exercise on the station by
that's called exercise we measure how
big a breath you can take by doing a
simple breathing test called spirometry
are usually at least once at the
beginning when we do full complete on
the function testing which allows us to
measure your breathing volumes as well
as the resting young volumes and the
strength of your breathing muscles and
other things like that so we measure how
you are affected by seeing how your
lungs work and then the other thing we
do
he says how much the lungs are affected
by doing a cat-scan CT scan if you have
happened if you haven't had one of those
don't already will be doing a CT scan
because the way the lungs are affected
the pasture of involvement the CT scan
is very informative to us and actually
is good enough for telling this is there
a problem but we want to know what type
of problem you have and how extensive it
is a CT scan is much more informed so
that would be the third area test
imaging with the ct's
ipf cannot be cured
there is now a drug on the market in
Canada that is indicated for treatment
of pulmonary fibrosis it doesn't cure
probably fibrosis its its effect is to
slow down the rate at which the illness
progress
the drug is called pirfenidone that's
the chemical name and the trade name is
s . we do advise most of our patients
with public fibrosis to take an
acceptance cysteine are not as its
initials RNA see this is an antioxidant
available in food stores it is very few
side effects and other people take it
just because they want to take something
that is an antioxidant and they believe
that help them and there is some
evidence from Europe a 10-second
cysteine your neck can help reduce the
rate of which Oliver grossest two trees
so we would often advise our patients to
take that
when the illness progresses to a point
that a person has great difficulty
breathing interesting as low oxygen
levels because oxygen can be transferred
from your breath into the bloodstream we
consider lung transplantation that's not
done at this Center is done in Toronto
but we would very often refer patients
to Toronto ahead of time to come to
consider whether going transplantation
is a good option for them and for the
transplant team to assess our patients
well ahead of time before it becomes a
necessity for know things that you can
do that's going to make the disease only
you you are
I can't make the school way we can cure
the impact of the disease on you is
predominant is mostly to make it
difficult for you to exercise it's very
important that you hold on as much and
as long as possible to your exercise
capacity and this you would do by
remaining active and staying out and
about and pushing yourself too should be
sure that your muscle stamina strength
and endurance as good as it can be and
whatever limitations you have caused by
your breathing not by any other partner
circulation your muscles 0 giants so
from your point of view being active is
a very important part of maintaining
your health for as long as possible
I'm glad that you brought it up because
it is essential that people would
probably fibrosis dogs continue smoking
if they've ever smoked before because
smoking can make this disease worst as
well as cause other diseases that if
they occur along with the grossest make
everything worse
so not smoking is also very important
part of maintaining respiratory health
over time we strongly encourage the
people use mainstream well respect
sources for information so these wood
into the lung association probably
fibrosis foundations of your canada are
the United States and then large
universities that have a good medical
repetition