I have become an inveterate wheezer over the last couple of years, so much so for instance, that I no longer record videos with my cell phone because of the racket my lungs make on the sound track. Until now I’ve put this down to the normal abnormalities of my emphysema, but it seems I should be more concerned. Wheezing is apparently … ‘a significant phenotype’ and has landed me in another extremely unfashionable ‘patient sub- group’. I only know this because my wife posted me the abstract of 2015 Taiwanese study on the subject; and like a blithering idiot I looked it up, perhaps because it had been flagged by both the US Library of Medicine and the National Institute of health.
It was predictably grim. Basically a wheezing group (i.e. me), was compared with a non-wheezing group (I sincerely hope, you) and it was eventually concluded that …’patients with COPD having the wheezing phenotype, are associated with (significantly) worse symptoms, more exacerbations, and worse lung function…’. In the process they also described my own repeated infectious exacerbations and itinerant pneumonias to a T.
Don’tcha jus luv it.
These days I make it a rule to avoid this type of research - because it never ends well, but as this one did get through and rings particularly true for me, may I please ask if anyone else who wheezes, also seems to be plagued with more than their fair share of chest infections. Even better, what on earth does one do to stop wheezing and prevent these tedious and gratuitous invasions.