What do you mean by Lung Diseases?

Fact: A person breathes about 25,000 times in a day.

Lungs help you to take in oxygen from the air and deliver it to the bloodstream when you breathe in and remove carbon dioxide (a kind of waste formed in the body) from the bloodstream to the atmosphere when you breathe out. Lungs have a complex structure. It has airways (which carry the air in and out of the lungs) and air sacs which expand and relax with each breath to bring in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Disease or problem in any part of this system can result in lung disease. Lung disease makes breathing (in or out) difficult. Presently lung diseases have become one of the most common medical conditions globally.

The term lung disease indicates any of the various pathologies that can affect the lungs and related structures. Lung diseases can be caused due to problem in the airways or blood vessels of the lung (respiratory disease) or in the air sacs that is the alveoli (the apparatus where exchange of gases in the lung takes place).

Some of the major lung diseases include:

• Asthma.
• Chronic bronchitis.
• COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).
• Emphysema.
• Lung cancer.
• Pneumonia.
• Interstitial lung disease.
• Pulmonary fibrosis.
• Sarcoidosis.

Read more articles on Understand Lung Diseases