Respiratory complications of obesity: from early changes to respiratory failure

Obesity is a significant and increasingly common cause of respiratory compromise. It causes a decrease in static and dynamic pulmonary volumes. The expiratory reserve volume is one of the first to be affected. Obesity is associated with reduced airflow, increased airway hyperresponsiveness, and an increased risk of developing pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary embolism, respiratory tract infections, obstructive sleep apnoea and obesity hypoventilation syndrome. The physiological changes caused by obesity will eventually lead to hypoxic or hypercapnic respiratory failure. The pathophysiology of these changes includes a physical load of adipose tissue on the respiratory system and a systemic inflammatory state. Weight loss has clear, well-defined benefits in improving respiratory and airway physiology in obese individuals. Obesity has significant and wide-ranging effects on respiratory function, and is an important contributor to morbidity and mortality https://bit.ly/3k8bGmX

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Breathe

• Publication date

  2023-03-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1183/20734735.0263-2022PMID 37378063PMCID 10292783
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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