| Summary: | <p>Abstract</p> <p>In obstructive lung diseases such as asthma and COPD dyspnea is a common respiratory symptom with different characteristics given the different pathogenic mechanisms: in COPD initially it can occur during exertion but then it increases progressively along with the airflow obstruction, whereas in asthma it occurs episodically and is caused by transient bronchoconstriction.</p> <p>The language of dyspnea includes a large range of clinical descriptors which have been evaluated for their correlation (of one or several descriptors) with underlying physiologic/physiopathologic mechanisms. These studies were done in asthma rather than in COPD, and dyspnea descriptors were found to be useful in identifying patients with life-threatening asthma. However further studies are needed to further explore such descriptors and their clinical utility.</p> <p>This review discusses dyspnea mechanisms in various obstructive lung disease subsets as well as the descriptors of dyspnea and their utility in clinical practice.</p>
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