Save Your Breath! Advice for patients with chronic bronchitis or emphysema and information for their families

Our plain-English summary of Save Your Breath! Advice for patients with chronic bronchitis or emphysema and information for their families, by Thomas L. Petty, Louise M. Nett (1980).

The study

• Authors: Thomas L. Petty, Louise M. Nett
• Published: 1980
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This item is not a research study. It is a patient education booklet titled "Save Your Breath!", written by Thomas L. Petty, M.D., and Louise M. Nett, R.N., R.R.T., and copyrighted in 1980 by Boehringer Ingelheim Ltd. It gave advice to people with chronic bronchitis or emphysema (together called COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), to their families and to their doctors. It reported no new data and does not mention asbestos. The booklet explained how the lungs work. It described chronic bronchitis as inflammation and swelling of the air passages, and emphysema as a disease that damages and destroys lung tissue. It stated that definite causes of COPD had not been discovered, but that both diseases were tied to cigarette smoking, air pollution and living or working near dust and fumes. It urged stopping smoking and early testing with a breathing machine called a spirometer. It also described breathing techniques, daily walking, medicines, inhalers, cleaning of equipment and oxygen. In the authors' opinion, IPPB machines were not recommended for most patients. The authors concluded that finding these diseases early could help save patients' breath.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: patient education booklet (advice, not a research study; no data collected or analyzed)
• Who was studied: No study population. The intended readers were patients with chronic bronchitis or emphysema, their families, and their physicians.
• Exposure: No asbestos or specific fiber is discussed. The booklet named cigarette smoking, air pollution, and living or working near dust and fumes as things tied to COPD, and frequent colds or infections as things that can make it worse.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the key step is to find the disease early with spirometers. They said that early detection, together with stopping smoking and controlling irritating factors, can help prevent a decline in health.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Emphysema, COPD, Inflammation, Damages.

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