Terms of Interest....

[Dmactds]

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:

nlhep.org/Documents/COPD%20...

"...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)