The prognosis for emphysema is determined, in large part, by the results of the most recent Pulmonary Function Test or PFT, the most common being the Spirometry test. Spirometry measures an emphysema patient's FEV1 or Forced Expiratory Volume. FEV1 is specifically the amount of air a patient can exhale in one second. The results of the PFT are then used for typing the patient or assigning them to a particular "stage" of the disease. The higher the stage number the worse the prognosis is for the patient.

GOLD or the Global Initiative on Obstructive Lung Disease, uses the PFT results in determining the stage a patient is in while the more accurate, BODE system uses additional factors including body mass index, shortness of breath or "dyspnea" and exercise capacity along with the results of the pulmonary function test.

Neither of these systems for staging emphysema patients takes into account how the patient feels physically or mentally which allows for a wide range of outcomes with regards to the emphysema patient's prognosis.

My mother fell into a deep depression after the spirometry test determined that she had the lungs of an 111 year old. After returning from the doctor she told me, "I can't believe I did this to myself." It was not until later that I realized how much the medications were contributing to her deterioration.

The prescribed medications for emphysema only provided temporary relief for emphysema symptoms anyway. As soon as the effects of the drug wore off, she was right back to square one with no permanent improvement in her condition.

The biggest question I had that was never adequately answered was,

"Why is my mother's emphysema getting worse more than two years after she quit smoking?"

No doctor could ever provide an answer. They would generally provide some medical and pharmaceutical rhetoric which oftentimes included the very rare congenital disorder, alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency. The thing they did not realize was that I had researched this disorder and knew how rare it was and that it did not suddenly materialize in 70 year old patients after 30 years of smoking cigarettes.

"I realized my mother's smoking had caused her emphysema but I also realized smoking was no longer in the picture and was not the cause of the disease progression."

Something was growing or proliferating in her lungs causing them to distend and crowd her stomach resulting in smaller and smaller meals. When I persisted with my question one doctor finally admitted to me, "We don't know. It's a mystery."

Instead of giving up and throwing in the towel I realized that the medical and pharmaceutical industries could only offer temporary relief from emphysema symptoms and could not provide any true lasting improvement for my mother. The long and the short of it was that I was obviously asking the wrong people. This prompted 6500+ hours of research into alternative approaches for actually reversing emphysema and solving this big medical mystery!