COMBINED ASSESSMENT OF COPD USING SYMPTOMS, SPIROMETRY AND RISK OF EXACERBATIONS

Abstract

COPD is largely preventable but is expensive to treat. COPD is a diverse disease entity with multiple dimensions that uniquely define the patient's performance, morbidity and mortality. Forced expiratory volume in first second (FEV (1)) is both the traditional metric used to define the progression of COPD as well as the strongest spirometric predictor of prognosis and mortality in COPD patients. However beside pulmonary function abnormalities, COPD is also associated with significant systemic effects. Therefore, the global assessment of an affected patient should include different aspects of the consequences of this disorder,beyond the ''gold-standard'' assessment of airflow limitations. Therefore, new GOLD guidelines (GOLD, 2014) suggest the assessment of the severity of COPD not only by FEV1 but also by symptom scoring (e.g., MMRC dyspnea scale or CAT score), and the frequency of acute exacerbations of COPD and these conceptual changes reinforce the importance of a good questionnaire in assessing the severity of COPD in clinical practice. The aim of this work was to assess COPD patients using symptoms (using CAT), spirometry and risk of exacerbations in Nasser Institute Hospital. This study included 100 COPD patients from outpatient chest clinic of Nasser Institute Hospital with wide range of COPD severity from January 2014 to March 2015. They fulfilled the inclusion criteria of the study.Diagnosis of COPD was done according to Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease guideline.