An overview of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Abstract

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is on the rise in the contemporary World. It is a preventable disease and rarely attributed to genetic deficiency. Several factors are responsible for this increased incidence, such as active and passive smoking, environmental pollution and occupational and delay of implementation of effective public policies for its prevention. The prevalence in the World varies greatly from 0.2% to 37%, this wide range is explained in part by cultural characteristics of countries that emitting international epidemiological reports, methods used to establish the diagnosis and classification of COPD. The prevalence and incidence has being higher in men, especially in the elderly above 75 years of age. Mortality has also increased in the last 30 to 40 years, 3-111 deaths per 100,000 populations. In Brazil, in 2011, the National Cancer Institute reported that 15.1% of the population of 190,732,694 million people in Brazil is smokers and about 15% of this population could develop the COPD. Thus, in absolute numbers, 4.32 million people have COPD Brazilian, only related to smoking. COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, representing 5% of all deaths, with an increase of 8% of the total number of deaths from 116,494 to 126,005 in the period from 2000 to 2005. If the analysis is extended from 1980 to 2000, the percentage of mortality was increased in 67%. This chapter aims to demonstrate the importance of the epidemic, which is characterized by late onset and deterioration of lung function very slow, but that may be controllable by harsher measures of tobacco control in Brazil.