Obesity and Lung Disease (eBook)

This new edition provides a fully updated guide to obesity's relation to lung disease. Over forty percent of the U.S. population is obese, and obesity is increasing in much of the world. Obesity has a major impact on health conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The effects of obesity on lung disease have drawn increasing attention in recent years. Furthermore, the COVID pandemic has dramatically illustrated how obesity affects respiratory disease, constitutes a major risk factor for COVID-19, and presents challenges to pulmonary care in the ICU.

Obesity changes physiology, immune and metabolic function, and is associated with changes in diet and the microbiome, all of which combine to have a major impact on the pathogenesis of respiratory diseases. Obesity is thus a risk factor for many respiratory diseases such as asthma, pulmonary hypertension, thromboembolic disease, obstructive sleep apnea and ARDS. Obesity also complicates the management of manyother respiratory diseases and conditions such as COPD, thromboembolic disease, and the care of the critically ill patient.

The objectives of this book are three-fold:

1.  To review how physiological, immune and metabolic factors might contribute to lung disease.
2.  To discuss the impact of obesity on common lung diseases
3. To outline important considerations in the management of critically ill obese patients.

There have been major advances in our understanding of the relationship between obesity and lung disease since the first edition in 2013, in addition to the major lessons learned about the importance of obesity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to the addition of eight new chapters on topics such as, the microbiome, lung transplant, and COVID-19 in the ICU.

This is an ideal guide for all clinicians taking care of patients with pulmonary and critical care diseases, as well as basic and translational scientists interested in how obesity affects respiratory health.

Anne E. Dixon, MD is currently the Professor and Chair, Department of Medicine at the University of Vermont.  She is originally from England, and moved to the United States after completing medical school at Oxford University.  She completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle, before joining the faculty at the University of Vermont.  Her research career has focused on understanding the mechanisms linking obesity and lung disease; as well as numerous publications, she has led a number of international workshops and symposia to address this topic.  She was the lead editor on the first edition of obesity and lung disease.

 

Erick Forno, MD, MPH is Vice-Chair for Clinical Research and Professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, and Director for Clinical Research at the Institute for Child Health Researchat Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. Dr Forno obtained his medical degree at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Perú, then moved to the United States and completed Pediatrics residency at Children's Hospital Colorado, fellowship in Pediatric Pulmonology at Boston Children's Hospital, and an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health. His overarching research interests include the epidemiology and genomics of asthma, with particular focus on studying the effects of obesity on childhood asthma and lung health. He has numerous publications on obesity and asthma and has organized several scientific symposia on the topic.