Oct 4, 2026 · 23 min · 10 segments
In this episode of the OET Podcast, practise your **OET Listening Part C skills** with two extended healthcare recordings exploring chronic lung disease: COPD and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF)…
Welcome back to the show.
Today we're talking about a condition that affects millions of people worldwide, yet a huge number of cases go undiagnosed until they're already fairly advanced.
I'm joined by Professor David Harmon, a respiratory medicine specialist who's spent the last 20 years researching chronic lung conditions.
David, thanks so much for joining us.
It's a topic I could talk about all day, so feel free to rein me in if I go off on a tangent.
I'll do my best.
So let's start with the basics.
For listeners who aren't familiar, can you give us a quick overview?
What they have in common is that the airways become narrowed and inflamed over time, and the tiny air sacs in the lungs lose their elasticity.
And this is the one that's almost always linked to smoking, isn't it?
Probably eight or nine out of every ten cases in high-income countries can be traced back to tobacco use.
But I do want to push back gently on the idea that it's purely a smoker's disease, because that assumption is actually part of why so many people go undiagnosed.
people who worked for years around dust, fumes, or certain chemicals, people exposed to biomass smoke from indoor cooking fires, and a smaller group with a genetic condition called Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which predisposes them to lung damage regardless of what they've inhaled.
That's a really important point because I imagine if you don't fit the stereotype, you might not think to get checked.
And that ties into one of the biggest problems we face clinically, which is late diagnosis.
Welcome back to the show.
Today we're talking about a condition that affects millions of people worldwide, yet a huge number of cases go undiagnosed until they're already fairly advanced.
I'm joined by Professor David Harmon, a respiratory medicine specialist who's spent the last 20 years researching chronic lung conditions.
David, thanks so much for joining us.
It's a topic I could talk about all day, so feel free to rein me in if I go off on a tangent.
I'll do my best.
So let's start with the basics.
For listeners who aren't familiar, can you give us a quick overview?
What they have in common is that the airways become narrowed and inflamed over time, and the tiny air sacs in the lungs lose their elasticity.
And this is the one that's almost always linked to smoking, isn't it?
Probably eight or nine out of every ten cases in high-income countries can be traced back to tobacco use.
But I do want to push back gently on the idea that it's purely a smoker's disease, because that assumption is actually part of why so many people go undiagnosed.
people who worked for years around dust, fumes, or certain chemicals, people exposed to biomass smoke from indoor cooking fires, and a smaller group with a genetic condition called Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which predisposes them to lung damage regardless of what they've inhaled.
That's a really important point because I imagine if you don't fit the stereotype, you might not think to get checked.
And that ties into one of the biggest problems we face clinically, which is late diagnosis.
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