Healthier Me Today
Scarring and damage to lung tissue are the causes of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. Because of the thicker, more stiff tissue, your lungs have a more challenging time performing correctly. You will get shorter breaths as your pulmonary fibrosis worsens.
Several factors may cause scarring linked with pulmonary fibrosis. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a kind of pulmonary fibrosis with no identified cause. On the other hand, doctors are often unable to pinpoint the source of the problem.
Even though the lung damage caused by Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis cannot be reversed, medications and therapies may help to relieve symptoms and improve the overall quality of life. For specific individuals, a lung transplant may be required.
Symptoms
The recognizing symptom of pulmonary fibrosis differ in different people, or you can say symptoms vary from one to another person. But some symptoms have been seen in almost all the affected persons, those are mentioned below:
· Breath shortness
· Getting a dry cough
· Fatigue
· Unusual loss of weight
· Muscle and joint aches
· Rounding and enlarging of the fingers or toes tips.
Many people out there usually experience the acute-flare ups in pulmonary fibrosis that involve the shortness of breath that will carry out for several days, in some cases it is long enough that continuous up to several weeks. There are several medicines including antibiotics and corticosteroids that will help to put a patient at ease. These medicines will help the patient by reducing swelling and inflammation. If these flare-ups get worse the doctors have to put the patient on a ventilator to assist his breathing activities.
Causes
Long-term exposure to certain substances, medical conditions, radiation therapy, and certain medicines, among other things, may be harmful. As a consequence of pulmonary fibrosis, the tissue around and between the air sacs (alveoli) in your lungs scars and thickens. As a consequence, getting oxygen into your circulation becomes more challenging.
Ionizing radiation therapy (IRT) is a kind of treatment that uses ionizing radiation to
Medications
Many medications, especially those listed below, may affect your lungs.
Chemotherapy treatments are cancer-fighting medications. Cancer-killing drugs, including methotrexate (Trexall, Otrexup, and others) and cyclophosphamide, may injure lung tissue.
Heart medication is a kind of medication used to treat heart problems. The medicine amiodarone (Cordarone, Nexterone, Pacerone), used to treat irregular heartbeats, has been linked to lung tissue destruction.
To be exact, antibiotics. Antibiotics like nitrofurantoin (Macrobid, Macrodantin, and others) and ethambutol may cause lung damage.
Inflammation-reducing medications. Anti-inflammatory drugs, including rituximab (Rituxan) and sulfasalazine, may induce lung damage (Azulfidine).
Factors that are in jeopardy
You are more likely to develop pulmonary fibrosis if you have the following factors:
Age. Even though pulmonary fibrosis has been detected in children and newborns, it is more frequent in middle-aged and older people.
Sex. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is more common in males than in women.
Smoking. Smokers and former smokers are considerably more prone to develop lung fibrosis than nonsmokers. Emphysema patients may develop pulmonary fibrosis.
Complications
Pulmonary fibrosis may lead to several problems, including:
You have elevated blood pressure in your lungs (pulmonary hypertension). Unlike systemic high blood pressure, this condition affects just the arteries in your lungs. It begins when scar tissue compresses the most minor streets and capillaries in your lungs, increasing blood flow resistance.
