Hodges Case - Nursing Assignments/ Essays/Case Study

Hi all,

I am a registered nurse. I guide/ tutor nursing students for their Nursing Assignments/ Essays/ Case studies/ Thesis etc. in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide

I am putting here one of my work.

Q1.

Pathophysiology of COPD

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is defined by poorly reversible obstruction in the airflow and an abnormal inflammatory response in the lungs. Due to long-term exposure to noxious particles and gases, the innate and adaptive immune responses from the lung are amplified resulting in hypersecretion of mucus, tissue destruction and dysfunction in normal repair and defence mechanism resulting in fibrosis and small airway inflammation (Anzueto, & Miravitlles, 2017). Due to causative factors such as genetic susceptibility and environmental insult to lungs, there is decreased ability of the lungs to prevent damage to lung tissue. There is increased production of free radicals and simultaneous inactivation of anti-proteases in lung. This leads to lung inflammation (Goldklang & Stockley, 2016). If this continues and repeated injury occurs to the bronchial tree, there is airway fibrosis and narrowing and increased mucus production leading to trapping of mucus in airways and serving as a site of infection. This leads to chronic bronchitis, one of the components of COPD (Eapen et al., 2018). On the other hand, due to proteolytic destruction of lung parenchyma, there is trapping of air within lungs, narrowing and collapse of the airway resulting in rupture of air sacs on lung surface seen as emphysema. Both the conditions, chronic bronchitis and emphysema define COPD (Dunican et al., 2021).