COPD includes two conditions: emphysema, where lungs lose elasticity and trap air, and chronic bronchitis, where inflamed airways produce excess mucus and block airflow. Both are commonly tested in nursing school.
There are two parts of copd. You've got emphysema and then you've got chronic bronchitis. And they are two very different things, but they do both fall under the umbrella of copd and nursing schools love to test you on this. So during emphysema, what is happening is that there's air trapping in the body, so in the lungs, there's air trapping. The basically the elastic of the lungs is breaking down and it's dilating the alveoli in the lungs so that there's so much air now being trapped in the lungs. Now we come down here to chronic bronchitis and it's the opposite, basically, is that there is just inflammation in the lungs. So there's not air trapping in the lungs, but there's very. It's a. The air is having a very hard time getting into the lungs because it's so filled with basically gunk. There's mucus production, a lot of bronchospasm and edema, and so that air has a hard time getting in, whereas in emphysema there's too much air inside the lungs. So both of these are both under the umbrella.
