Recently, according to media reports, 36-year-old Hu Hanqing, a native of Yongzhou, Hunan Province, and his wife Huang Yulian, because they have been engaged in jade processing for 5 years, unfortunately both suffered from pneumoconiosis, and now their lives have entered the countdown. This news has made pneumoconiosis a problem of public concern.
According to relevant statistics, the number of people reporting pneumoconiosis in China has exceeded 720,000. So, what kind of disease is pneumoconiosis? What are its hazards? How can it be prevented and treated? We're going to talk to you about this topic today.
Patients with pneumoconiosis are called people who live in dust
Dust is currently the most important occupational disease hazard factor in China, and pneumoconiosis is also the most important occupational disease in China. Pneumoconiosis is a systemic disease that causes diffuse fibrosis of lung tissue caused by long-term inhalation of dust during production and labor, which accumulates in the alveoli under the peripheral bronchi. Patients with pneumoconiosis are called people who live in dust.
Pneumoconiosis is irreversible and once it occurs, it cannot be cured for life. As the condition worsens, their lungs become as hard as stones. In order to breathe, they can only sit and kneel until the end of life.
What are the clinical manifestations of pneumoconiosis?
The clinical manifestations of pneumoconiosis patients mainly include cough, sputum, chest pain, and dyspnea, and some patients may have wheezing, hemoptysis, and some systemic symptoms.
Cough is not pronounced in early pneumoconiosis patients, but can worsen significantly as the course of the disease progresses. Cough is more pronounced in smokers than in non-smokers.
Patients with pneumoconiosis have sputum coughing even when there is very little cough.
Almost every patient with pneumoconiosis has chest pain, either mildly or severely. The part of chest pain is not fixed, mostly localized; the nature of pain is not serious, generally vague pain, swelling pain, needle-like pain and so on.
Dyspnea is related to the severity of the condition. The occurrence of pulmonary comorbidities can significantly aggravate the degree of dyspnea and the rate of development, and can involve the heart, resulting in pulmonary heart disease.
Pneumoconiosis is mainly based on prevention
The key to the prevention of pneumoconiosis is to prevent the inhalation of harmful dust to the greatest extent, as long as the measures are appropriate, pneumoconiosis is completely preventable. The precautions are as follows:
1. Enterprise process reform and innovation of production equipment are the main ways to eliminate dust hazards. The use of wet operation, the use of wet milling quartz, underground transportation spray sprinkling and other ways; for places that can not take wet operation, should be used to adopt a closed exhaust method to prevent dust from flying.
2. Pay attention to the health examination of workers, including pre-employment and regular health examinations, and also do dust removal operation inspections when getting rid of dust operations.
3. Personal protection, wearing dust-proof protective gear, such as dust helmets, air helmets, air masks, etc. Studies have proved that cotton gauze masks cannot play a role in dust protection.
Treatment of pneumoconiosis
There is currently no specific treatment for pneumoconiosis and a radical cure. The conventional treatment of pneumoconiosis patients includes timely transfer of dust and comprehensive treatment, including strengthening nutrition, adhering to medical sports, increasing the body's ability to resist infection, and actively preventing and treating tuberculosis and other complications in order to alleviate symptoms, delay the progression of the disease, and prolong the life of patients.
At present, there are no drugs that can completely reverse pneumoconiosis lesions, and drug treatment is mainly to prevent or inhibit the progression of silicosis early.
In the early stage, harmful substances such as silicum dust deposited in the lungs of patients with pneumoconiosis can be discharged through lung lavage, which has a certain effect on improving lung function, but there is no evidence-based medical evidence on whether it can be treated for a long time.
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