The Effects in Smoker Lungs - Health Channel

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The Effects in Smoker Lungs |

The Centers for Disease Control says one out of every five deaths each year is cigarette related. That is, more deaths than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murder and suicides combined.

Men account for almost 280,000 deaths, while women are over 200,000. And men who smoke are at an increased risk for dying from bronchitis, emphysema, lung cancer and coronary heart disease.

Rodney Benjamin, Critical Care and Pulmonary Medicine Physician at South Miami Hospital, explains that people who smoke have a lot of carbon in the lung and it gets black, which starts to create a lot of medical issues to the patient.

Transcript

We have some statistics I want to share with our viewers and it’s a from the Centers for Disease Control on Cigarettes and Death 1 out of every 5 deaths is cigarette related each year that is more deaths than AIDS alcohol car accidents illegal drugs murder and suicides combined we also have a breakdown of smoking deaths by sex men account for almost 280.000 deaths while women are slightly over at 200.000, both very high numbers and then one last statistic here, men who smoke are at an increased risk for dying from bronchitis emphysema lung cancer and coronary heart disease. I do want to share with our viewers a 3D image of a lung and, doctor, you walk us through in terms of what we’re looking at. >Sure, well, these are pictures of what the lung looks like so this is this is a dark lung lungs are supposed to be pink like a sponge and people who smoked have a lot of carbon in the lung and it gets black like that so that’s the outside appearance if you open the chest and look inside if you been a smoker and this is someone with emphysema which is along with holes in it you see these little gaps up here most of the smoke goes to the upper lobes so most of the damage in emphysema is in the upper lobes and these little distended cavities are what you see in emphysema and that’s damage and a bad thing obviously and this looks at the structures within the lungs the airways the blood vessels and you can see this is nice and red which exaggerates the bronchitis that occurs from the irritant effects of smoking and it shows this yellow stuff which is mucus which is the increased amount of mucus that the glands produced that chokes up people with chronic bronchitis and it shows thickening and scarring around the edge of the lung which happens eventually because of inflammation in the lung and oxidation of the lung tissue which is what causes the lung get damaged that lowers oxygen and creates difficulty breathing. So those are the basic bad things happen from smoking.

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