THE DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF NEVER-SMOKERS WITH COPD
Abstract:
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) currently represents a major public health problem throughout the world. Most of the research that has been done on COPD blamed almost exclusively cigarette smoking for the development of the disease. However, in real life, there are numerous patients with COPD that are never-smokers. A low suspicion index makes diagnosing COPD a real problem in this population and severely underestimates its incidence. The current study wishes to paint a demographic image of the non-smoker COPD patient in Vâlcea county in order to raise a flag for this often missed diagnosis. In the studied population, we observed a predominance of the female gender and the low educational status. Most patients live in the rural environment and use biomass as the primary heating source.
full text article in Romanian (.RO) |
full text article in English (.EN) |