What is the standard treatment for someone with severe emphysema?
Dr. Hogarth: People with severe emphysema are obviously told to quit smoking. They get vaccinated, if they need oxygen, they’re put on oxygen, they do pulmonary rehabilitation, try to maintain good nutrition, and then they get the standard various inhalers that are prescribed on the market that have been shown to improve lung function, and for some people, that’s all you need. But there are people whose emphysema is advanced enough that despite all of that they still continue to do poorly. Traditionally, the two other things available then are either lung transplant, which has obviously lots of issues, and a surgery called lung volume reduction surgery, where we literally cut out these dysfunctional regions of the lungs so that the remaining good lung at the bottom can do more work. Except that it’s a massive surgery, and so the two kind of last ditch options clearly have their limits. What do the Valves do exactly? Dr. Hogarth: The idea behind the valve was to sort of mimic the idea o
