Cystic Fibrosis: A Scary Disease

Cystic fibrosis is an genetic disease that can cause bad damage to the lungs and other organs in the body. It is a common genetic (Gene) disease affecting to geriatric, (adults) young adults, or and kids. Now they’re still searching for a cure, but the only thing that is currently available is a donor’s lungs.

Nearly 1 in every 30 Americans are a carrier of the recessive gene that leads to CF (About Cystic Fibrosis, n.d.). Although CF is a life-threatening condition, through the advancement of treatments and care, there has been a steady increase in life expectancy and improvement in the quality of life. The current mean age of survival is now 40. Although that does not seem very high, sixty years ago, a child diagnosed with CF did not survive childhood (About Cystic Fibrosis, n.d.). CF is a complex disease, where the types and severity of symptoms can differ widely from person to person. Symptoms may include fatigue, salty-tasting skin, persistent cough with phlegm, wheezing and shortness of breath, lung infections, and poor growth and weight loss (Cystic Fibrosis Symptoms, Causes & Risk Factors, 2018). Many different factors, such as the age of diagnosis, can affect an individual's health and the course of the

*Specific Purpose: To inform my classmates about cystic fibrosis and how severe it really is.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a lethal autosomal recessive disorder with a clinical incidence of 1 in every 3500 newborns1. Currently, over 4000 Canadians have CF, with 60% being adults2. In the past, CF was considered a fatal disease with a life expectancy of less than two years, however, advances in enzymatic and antibiotic therapy have greatly improved the life expectancy of patients afflicted with CF3. Currently, the median age of Canadian CF patients is 50 years2.

Cystic Fibrosis is a life threatening condition that causes severe damage to the lungs and digestive system. Developing this condition can change a person's entire life. Depending on the severity of the condition a person can be affected by mild symptoms such as shortness of breath, all the way to severe symptoms such as rectal prolapse, or even death. Screening is done on infants in all 50 states; therefore if a child has inherited Cystic Fibrosis it will be known in the first months of life. As professional staff members of a nursing community it will be necessary to help prepare the child and the family for the life of Cystic Fibrosis.

Cystic Fibrosis is a disorder where the exocrine glands secrete abnormally thick mucus, leading to obstruction of the pancreas and chronic infections of the lungs, which usually cause death in childhood or early adulthood. Some mildly affected patients may survive longer. Doctors can diagnose the disease by testing the patients perspiration because people with Cystic Fibrosis have high amounts of salt in their perspiration. Those with respiratory infections are treated with antibiotics, with aerosols that relieve constriction of the airways and liquefy the thick mucus, and by physical therapy to help patients cough up the obstructing secretions. Patients with pancreatic insufficiency can take pancreatic enzymes with meals.

In infants symptoms include coughing, wheezing, excess mucus in the lungs, shortness of breath, extremely salty skin and decelerated growth. With infants it is very common for them to develop pneumonia infections because of all the bacteria that resides in the lungs. With treatment, most patients with cystic fibrosis live into their 20’s and 30’s, some individuals with milder cases can live longer. Death is most often due to end-stage lung disease.Thus far no cure for the disease has been found. Although, research on gene therapy is promising. Treatment is generally aimed at alleviating symptoms, preventing infections, and slowing the progress of the disorder. (Egan’s 10th Ed,

In 1955, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation was formed by mothers who were determined to find a cure for their children who were diagnosed with the disease but were given a small life expectancy. As the years went on life expectancy for people diagnosed with CF increased. In 1965, a four-year-old boy was listening to

The findings were made during a study of death rates among Austraians with CF between 1979 and 2005. Until 1970 the average age of death for people with CF around the world was just 8. Experts now believe that 90 percent of babies born with CF will reach the age of 40 if they are lucky so the average percent of someone surviving is less than 10 percent. However, in Australia male adults with the disease now live to an average age of 26, with females dying earlier than males.

Nausea and loss of appetite, and weight loss. There are also a lot of symptoms if you have Cystic Fibrosis in you lungs and respiratory system such as coughing or increased mucus in the sinuses or lungs, fatigue, nasal congestion, repeated episodes of pneumonia, fever, increased coughing and shortness of breath, increased mucus, loss of appetite, and sinus pain or pressure caused by infection or polyps. Also with Cystic Fibrosis you could only experience symptoms later in your life like infertility (in men), repeated inflammation of the pancreas, respiratory symptoms, and clubbed fingers. One general symptom of Cystic Fibrosis is salty tasting skin. The treatment for Cystic Fibrosis is fairly mild with only treatment through antibiotics, inhaled medicines to clear the airways, a lung transplant in extreme cases, and oxygen therapy if a lung infection becomes really bad. Treatment for Cystic Fibrosis that impacts your digestive system is also pretty mild. It can be treated with a special high protein and high calorie diet, ingestible pancreatic enzymes, and vitamin

Cystic Fibrosis, a very serious inherited genetic disease, is also known as CF and sixty-five roses. This disease affects one in every 3,000 live births. It may first appear in a newborn, but can appear all the way up until a young adult. However, ten percent of most cases are apparent at birth. CF affects the lungs and causes a build-up of abnormally thick mucus which leads to chest infections, and CF also affects the reproductive system. Doctors do not know what causes the mucus to thicken. CF’s infections usually lead to death in childhood and early adulthood. Most people infected with CF had a life span into their teens long ago. Now, due to advanced technology, the life span is in the fifties or older.

Abstract: The main goal of this paper is to explain what Cystic Fibrosis is and also to explain what

This is still one of the most widely used tests because researchers still do not know exactly which gene is the defective Cystic Fibrosis gene ("Cystic,” Hereditary 47). Patients are usually diagnosed by the age of two but, a few rare causes are not diagnosed until the age of eighteen ("Cystic," umm.edu 1). Since symptoms usually appear early in life patients that are not diagnosed until later in life often have more mild forms of Cystic Fibrosis (Silverstein, Silverstein, and Silverstein 1; "Cystic," umm.edu 1). Luckily today children with Cystic Fibrosis are diagnosed early, in the nineteen-forties children often died from Cystic Fibrosis before they were old enough to attend school ("About" 1). Even though testing for Cystic Fibrosis is exceedingly simple the list of complications and illnesses associated with Cystic Fibrosis is extensive.

Here are some other changes affecting CF patients: Crackles, non-productive or productive cough, physical changes to the chest cavity, cyanosis, and clubbing of the fingernails. Genetic testing should be done since cystic fibrosis is an inherited disorder. Those affected with cystic fibrosis have parents “who do not have cystic fibrosis but are heterozygotes or carriers of the disease. A heterozygote has 1 dominant allele and 1 recessive allele.” (Grossman & Grossman, 2005, p. 46) My co-worker and her spouse are heterozygotes, and they have a 50/50 chance of having a cystic fibrosis child, they were not lucky with the odds and both their sons are affected with cystic fibrosis. These

This is a great improvement over survival rate of the 1950s with the life expectancy of 1 year or less for cystic fibrosis patients. Unfortunately, since it is a recessive genetic disease, there are many men and women who are carriers of the disease without actually having the disease themselves. If each parent is a non-affected carrier of cystic fibrosis, there is only a 25 percent chance of having a non-affected, non-carrier child and 50 percent chance of having a child that is a non-affected carrier of cystic fibrosis. Unfortunately there is also a 25 percent chance of having a child affected by cystic fibrosis. This makes prenatal genetic screening very important.