My 20 year old son

[sandyt385]

My twenty year old son had just recently been told that after a cat scabn of his lungs, that he has emphysema. They also said he has some nodules outside of the lungs on the upper lobes that they want to do another scan on in 6 months to make sure there are not more or that these do not grow. What is the severity of him having this so young? He has been smoking since he was 14- 15 yeaqrs old. Any suggestions on helping him to quit smoking?

[National Jewish Health]

It is unusual for a 20 year old to have clinically significant emphysema.  When seen at this age, it is almost always a result of the disease, alpha-1 antitrypsin disease.  Your son’s doctors should check his blood for this problem.  Emphysema severity ranges from mild to very severe and the CT scan can give an estimate of this.  What; you need to know is what is the severity and this can be determined best, not by the CT scan, but by pulmonary function tests (PFTs).

Your son must quit smoking if there is to be any chance of slowing the progression of the emphysema.  To help him quit smoking, he should contact then National Quit Line at (800) QUIT NOW (784-8669).  You can get information on this from the American Lung Association.

The best advice we can give is that you request that your son be seen in consultation by a lung specialist, called a pulmonologist.  He/she will be better able to answer your question about the nodules, after he/she looks at them on the CT scan.

[RN_student]

Keep encouraging him to quit smoking-it does work eventually in many cases. I recommend going to the surgeon general's website on smoking and looking under some of the clinician's guidelines. Many are easy to read for the average person and give practical suggestions to help people quit (such as asking them what are some things they don't like about smoking, what are some things they feel may get in the way of quitting, what are some personal benefits to quitting, ect.). This may help at least get him to think about quitting. And, of course, ask him regularly what he thinks about smoking cessation classes or even individual therapy.
Smoking cessation is especially important in your son's condition. Keep the power of suggestion going!