Asbestos:
The Asbestosis is, as it suggests his name, caused by the aspiration of fibers of the asbestos. It is not a cancerous pulmonary disease.
The debilitating process is not understood totally of the asbestosis still, but apparently the fibers of asbestoses in the lungs cause to irritation and inflammation. The body tries to neutralize these strange fibers of several complicated ways, and some, or all of these processes entail to an additional inflammation and cellular destruction. Finally, to a fibrosis or weave healed in the interstitial spaces around the small air conduits and the alveolos is developed. The thickening and the healing prevent that I oxygenate and the carbon dioxide travels between the alveolos and the cells of the blood, and the breathing becomes less efficient.
The asbestosis often exists without symptoms, and soon it is detected only by x-ray. Nevertheless, the symptoms of the asbestosis typically include the lack of breath and the cough. At the rate that the evil progresses, the symptoms can get worse. It can be a progressive disease, which means that it can continue getting worse although the contact with the asbestos has stopped. In rare cases, it can cause the death.
The thickening and the healing can see in x-rays or tomographies. Also, if it causes a reduction in the good pulmonary operation, the asbestosis by an examination of the breathing or the pulmonary function can be detected (PFT).
The diagnosis can be done when there are a history of contact with the asbestos and positive results of a clinical examination, only radiographs, tomography and/or examination of the pulmonary function (PFT). Also it is possible to be identified conclusively by biopsy.
The asbestosis affects lungs both (is bilateral) and, although inferior of the lungs is mainly in the field, extends much generally.
The serious cases of the asbestosis must to a strong and prolonged contact with the asbestos, for example a worker of many years of a factory of asbestos textiles, and/or a prolonged, but more intense contact less, like, for example he of a worker in the quarters of the kettle or the machine of a boat under construction during World War II.
This does not mean that everybody that has had a strong contact with the asbestos contracts the asbestosis, only that everybody that contracts the asbestosis yes was in contact with the enemy with great amounts of asbestos fibers.
Apparently, the variety of the asbestos fiber to which the worker was exhibited is not significant for the development of the asbestosis.
For more information on the asbestosis and the tratamirentos, it sees:
- University of Texas, Center of Sciences of the Health in San Antonio - in English
- University of Iowa Hospitals - in English