COPD Treatments: Improving Your Quality of Life

COPD Treatments: Improving Your Quality of Life

In this article

• COPD Treatment: Your Goals
• COPD Treatment: Quitting Smoking
• COPD Treatment: Other Lifestyle Changes
• COPD Treatment: Taking Medications
• COPD Treatment: Using Oxygen Treatment
• COPD Treatment: Having Surgery

COPD Treatment: Using Oxygen Treatment

If you have severe COPD, you may have low levels of oxygen in your blood. This means your body doesn't get enough oxygen on its own. Your doctor may recommend oxygen treatment to protect your organs, enhance your sleep, improve your daily activity, and help you live longer.

Oxygen is often stored in a portable tank that you can take with you. You may receive the oxygen through a flexible nasal tube or face mask. Or you can buy an oxygen concentrator, which can extract oxygen from room air. Oxygen concentrators are cheaper than having compressed oxygen delivered.

COPD Treatment: Having Surgery

If you have severe COPD with significant lung damage, you may need surgery, especially if you have severe symptoms, can't control your COPD with medications, or have trouble breathing most of the time. Surgery may involve:

• Bullectomy to remove enlarged air spaces that interfere with breathing. They sometimes form when walls of air sacs break.
• Lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) to remove sections of damaged lung tissue.
• Lung transplant to replace a diseased lung with a healthy donor lung. This is only done in very severe cases of COPD.