New Treatment Is Lung Disease 'Game-Changer

More than 3 million Americans suffer from advanced emphysema, the nation’s third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Until recently there was little doctors could do to help them other than perform major surgery to remove the diseased portion of their lungs or give them a full-blown lung transplant.

Now there is new hope. It’s a tiny metal device known as the Lung Volume Reduction Coil (LVRC).

“We think this is going to be a game-changer for patients with advanced emphysema,” says Charlie Strange, M.D., pulmonologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

When LVRCs are implanted in patients’ lungs, they compress diseased tissue and allow healthy tissue to function more efficiently.

Because the coils reduce lung volume by up to 30 percent, restore the lungs’ natural elasticity, and open up the small airways, they counteract emphysema’s hallmark symptom: shortness of breath.

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