Treatment of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

nated against the dangers of smoking. Despite the U.S. Sur-geon General agreeing with the monarch some 350 years later, the persisting habit of smoking cigarettes poses a major health problem that will continue for decades because of the insidious organ damage that tobacco smoke causes. Most chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is caused by tobacco; smokers have a tenfold increase in both the disease and death from COPD compared with those who never smoked. Secondhand smoke, exposure to pollution, and re-current infections account for most of the disease incidence in nonsmokers. A small proportion of cases could be familial, resulting from anti-trypsin deficiency, and an uncertain num-ber of cases are the outcome of lung damage from chronic asthma. Some statistics will show the size of the problem. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is made up mainl