Copd meaning

The system looks at many things. The basic idea is to understand how severe your What Is the GOLD System for Grading COPD? The GOLD system bases the stage of your COPD on several things: • Your symptoms • How many times your COPD has gotten worse • Any times you’ve had to stay in the hospital because your COPD has gotten worse • Results from spirometry, a test that checks the amount of air and speed that you can exhale GOLD stands for the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization started it in 1997. GOLD helps raise awareness of COPD and works with doctors and other health experts to create better ways to prevent and treat this condition. It also creates the guidelines most doctors use to classify and treat COPD. Spirometry and Your COPD Stage Spirometry results are based on two measurements: • Forced vital capacity (FVC). This is the largest amount of air you can • Forced expiratory volume (FEV-1). FEV-1 shows how much air you can exhale from your GOLD Stages or Grades The original GOLD system used the term "stages" to refer to the different levels of COPD. Now they’re called "grades." Experts believe this new system allows doctors to better match patients with the right treatments. The original stages also relied only on FEV results. But now doctors consider other things, too. Your doctor will assign grades to these four things: • How severe your ...