Just finished a round of docs in the past week and have one more appointment next week.
During the last visit with my VA doc he mentioned the terms "Pink Puffer" and "Blue Bloaters" in reference to the two classes of illnesses listed under the COPD umbrella.
I'd never heard them before and thought the group would have an interest, so here's a link and a short blurb from the page:
"...THE BLUE BOATER AND PINK PUFFER PRESENTATION IN ADVANCED COPD
Historically, Dornhorst offered a landmark descrip- tion of two extreme clinical phenotypes in the mid-fifties.16 The classic 'Blue Bloater' was described as a younger patient with chronic bronchitis, who often presented with congestive right heart failure. The classic 'Pink Puffer' was an older and skeletal muscle-wasting patient who had unrelenting, disabling dyspnea and clear evidence of emphysema.
Two patients showing bloating and puffer characteristicsTwo such patients were encountered during the enrollment period of a pulmonary rehabilitation program. Their photographs are presented in Fig. 1. This figure has been reproduced many times, but it is still valuable because of the knowledge of the clinical course, prognosis and pathological features that these two individuals revealed, as they were observed and treated, up to the time of their death. Fig. 2 presents the PA chest X-ray of the Blue Bloater patient on the left and the Pink Puffer patient on the right. Notice both the enlarged cardiac silhouette and prominent pulmonary arteries of the Blue Bloater (left); with marked hyperinflation, vascular cut-off beyond the central and also enlarged pulmonary arteries of the Pink Puffer (right)..."
Regards,
Duncan (Pink Puffer)
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That is very interesting thank you for posting it. It shows the importance of not just lumping these illnesses under 1 umbrella term copd. In the earlier stages it's not really relevant which 1 you primarily have, but it certainly is in the later stages. x
Hi Duncan, thanks for posting but as I found it too depressing I didn't read much beyond the first paragraph. I seem to be in the particularly lucky position of having a foot in both camps and am currently embracing denial as my default strategy.
I found you letter interesting, I don't think you can encapsulate everyone under the same umbrella as we are all different. I feel that we just have to look after ourselves as well as possible, needing our lungs as we do. ~We know what to do, sometimes needing just a little push and encouragement, which is why we are here, among very helpful people who have all been or still are, just where we are.
Hi Duncan, I remember reading about the blue and the pink many moons ago and decided then I was going to be neither, I'm reinventing my emphysema and I like the colour that pink and blue make, a soft lilac ..Alpha oner. Lol😁 I am ! joking aside it was interesting how they carried out their observations 😁 huffxxx😉
Yes..., I'm a bit confounded by my own situation; after my pulmonary collapse 3 1/2 years ago, I was told I was COPD (emphysema); I came out of hospital weighing about 160 lbs, I'm 6'1", and without nearly a muscle in my body from being unconscious for a solid week. I was prescribed a couple of inhalers and oxygen.
I'm still doing the inhalers but have cut down to once a day for the steroid type. I've taken myself off the oxygen and have been so for most of the last year and only occasionally before that after practically being married to that damned tank for a couple of years.
In any event, even though my FEV is at 25, physically and mentally I feel better and better day by day.
I'm perplexed about all this as I'd been led to believe it was all downhill from where I was a few years ago. Of course, I've given up smoking and drinking any liquor at all and have of late begun a slight exercise regimen.
I have no cough, no fainting, no phlegm..., none of the usual signs that've been described and so that seems to go along with the emphysema pattern.
Anyway, I'm 73 and, of course, can no longer convince myself that I'm 34 as I did for so many years but I'm in pretty decent shape and better off than many in my age group.
It's all a bit confusing.
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