© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Thoracic Society
EDITORIAL
Breathlessness during exercise in COPD
Breathlessness during exercise in COPD: how do the drugs work?
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor P M A Calverley
Department of Medicine, Clinical Sciences Centre, University Hospital Aintree, Liverpool L9 7AL, UK; pmacal@liverpool.ac.uk
Salmeterol reduces breathlessness during exercise without necessarily changing exercise duration
Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; salmeterol; pressure-time product; dynamic hyperinflation; respiratory muscles
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The inability to exercise because of distressing breathlessness is one of the most frequent problems experienced by patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)1 and is a major determinant of impaired quality of life.2 Our understanding of why this occurs and how best to treat it has improved significantly in the last decade. At one level the problem appears relatively straightforward. Exercise invariably involves an increase in whole body oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production, which requires an appropriate rise in alveolar ventilation if arterial carbon dioxide tension is to remain constant. In patients with COPD the ability to increase minute ventilation is restricted as is the capacity to empty their lungs quickly, hence exercise limitation occurs at a lower workload than in age matched healthy subjects. Although there is much truth in this simple scheme, it does not do justice to the many complex
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Calverley, P. M. A.
(2005). Long-acting inhaled bronchodilators in COPD: how many drugs do we need?. Eur Respir J
26: 190-191
[Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
