Question

5. What are pack years of smoking? Is there a significant difference between the moderate and severe airflow limitation groups regarding pack years of smoking? Provide a rationale for your answer.

Answer 1

Number of packs of cigarettes smoked by an individual person in a specific period of time is called pack years of smoking. Air flow limitation is a way to predict chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)which is the result of a prolonged time constant for lung emptying, caused by increased resistance of the small conducting airways due to narrowing and increased compliance of the lung as a result of inflammation, scarring and destruction Example ,In a study symptom burden in stable COPD patients with moderate or severe airflow limitation done by Eckerbald et al , 2014 it was found out that there was no difference between moderate and severe airflow limitation groups regarding the pack year of smoking because the p value is 0.177 (less than 5%) due to Moderate 29.1 and Severe 34 .