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ARNOLD L. FLICK, M.D.; RICHARD R. PATON, M.D.

AMA Arch Intern Med. 1959;104(4):518-526.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

All of the patients we have seen with idiopathic obstructive emphysema have given a history of many years of cigarette smoking. This observation has been strengthened by published reports^1-3 relating emphysema and smoking. Other articles relate bronchitis^4-7 and wheezing attacks ("smoker's respiratory syndrome")⁸ to smoking, and it is apparent from the respective definitions that emphysema is included in these studies. Smokers also suffer higher death rates from noncancerous pulmonary disease than do nonsmokers.⁹

In a search for a consistent definition for emphysema, we have found none better than Laennec's original observation ¹⁰:

The general signs of this malady are somewhat uncertain; dyspnea is the chief characteristic and it is one of those varieties which we confuse under the name of asthma... all of the patients in whom I have discovered this affection were subject to habitual cough. I have met with patients who have declared that they had neither habitual . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Seattle

From the Medical Service of the Seattle Veterans Administration Hospital and the Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Resident in Medicine, Seattle Veterans Administration Hospital and the University of Washington, now trainee of the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases in gastroenterology at the University of Washington (Dr. Flick); Resident and Assistant in Medicine, Seattle Veterans Administration and the University of Washington, now Clinical Investigator, Veterans Administration, Seattle Veterans Administration Hospital (Dr. Paton).

Footnotes
Submitted for publication Jan. 6, 1959.

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