EDITORIALS
Respiratory disability: what is it, how can we measure it, what causes it and is it important?
Correspondence to:
Professor P Harber, Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, 10880 Wilshire Blvd, #1800, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA; pharber@ucla.edu
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Respiratory disability is a significant health outcome that has important implications both for the individual patient and for society. First, "disability" represents the actual impact of the disease on the patient’s life. While "impairment" (eg, loss of 200 ml forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1)) is an abstract concept, patients are directly impacted by the ability to work or care for themselves (ie, respiratory disability). Second, functional status as manifested by respiratory disability is an integrated measure of health status and can be an effective indicator of response to treatment. Third, by working together, physicians, patients and employers may institute specific interventions to ameliorate respiratory disability. Fourth, in aggregate, disability for work due to respiratory disease has significant societal impact on overall work productivity of a society. Fifth, estimates of disease burden or years of life saved by medical interventions are commonly adjusted for the degree of disability
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