Your lungs are among the most complex systems of your body, expanding and relaxing thousands of times throughout the day. Breathing is the key function of the lungs that involves inhalation and exhalation. Inhalation involves absorbing oxygen by the lungs for supply to blood cells by the heart, while exhalation involves pumping out harmful carbon dioxide from the body cells, and out of the body.
Lung diseases are among the most common medical diseases that people suffer from all over the world. Tens of millions are suffering from lung diseases in the USA alone. Lung disease can be categorized into the below main categories.
Lung diseases affecting the windpipe
Asthma: This is one of the most common lung diseases in which airways are constantly inflamed, causing shortness of breath and wheezing. Pollution, allergies and infections can trigger asthma symptoms. Asthma patients may require the use of nebulizer to provide relief from the inflammation.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): The person experiences difficulty in breathing due to lowered capacity to exhale carbon dioxide.
Chronic bronchitis: The patient suffering from this lung disease under COPD category suffers from long-term wet cough.
Other lung diseases affecting your airways or trachea include acute bronchitis, emphysema and cystic fibrosis.
Lung diseases affecting the air sacs (Alveoli)
Pneumonia: This occurs due to infection of your alveoli by bacteria or viruses.
Tuberculosis: This condition results when pneumonia slowly gets worse over time.
Lung cancer: Uncontrolled growth of cells may occur in any part of your lungs including alveoli.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS): This condition occurs due to sudden injury to the lungs from a serious illness. The patient may require a breathing aid machine called ventilator until their lungs recover.
Lung diseases affecting blood vessels
In this condition, the right side of your heart gets low-oxygen blood from veins that is pumped into the lungs through pulmonary arteries. The disease has below two main conditions:
Pulmonary embolism (PE): A blood clot breaks off, travels to the heart and gets pumped into the lungs. The blood clot may cling to a pulmonary artery, causing shortness of breath in the patient, and low oxygen level.
Lung diseases affecting chest wall
Chest wall plays an important role in breathing. Lung diseases occurring due to problems with chest wall include:
Obesity hypoventilation syndrome: Extra weight on your chest can make it harder for your chest to expand to its normal size. This condition may cause serious breathing problems in many individuals.
Neuromuscular disorder: The nerves that control the respiratory muscles do not function properly at their normal level. The affected individual will experience problems in breathing. Common types of neuromuscular diseases include sclerosis and myasthenia gravis.
Saving on the treatment of lung and other diseases
Lung diseases are among many chronic diseases among others that people suffer from, such as heart diseases, kidney diseases, hypertension, diabetes, etc. The costs of these medicines may become unaffordable and drain your savings, especially if someone else in your family also requires medications. That’s why, people opt for health insurance to lower expenses on their medications’ costs. The benefit of health insurances is that while you are offered cashless hospitalization and treatment for emergency interventions, other medications costs are also reduced in the form of CVS copay optimization and other copayment options.
PrudentRx program offers you multiple options for choosing the best health insurance plan, and lower the costs of your treatments. PrudentRx drug list contains information about various branded and generic medications that you can get a low price. Prudent FAQs can be read to get more information about various health insurance plans and other information that you may find very useful for affording the costs of your medications.
