BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE There is increasing recognition of asthma-COPD overlap syndrome (ACOS), which shares some features of both asthma and COPD; however, the prevalence and characteristics of ACOS are not well understood. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of ACOS among patients with COPD and its characteristics using a stepwise approach as stated in the recent report o...

BACKGROUND Health-related quality of life measures are widely used in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, they are extremely limited when used to evaluate patients outside the clinical trials. The aim of this study was to analyse the burden of the disease using a simple, validated, self-administered questionnaire specifically developed for patients in daily clin...

BACKGROUND Poor adherence to inhaled medications in COPD patients seems to be associated with an increased risk of death and hospitalization. Knowing the determinants of nonadherence to inhaled medications is important for creating interventions to improve adherence. OBJECTIVES To identify disease-specific and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) factors, associated with adherence to inhale...

BACKGROUND The COPD Assessment Test (CAT™) is a new questionnaire that has been developed recently for measuring the COPD patient's health status. It is known to have a good correlation with disease specific health status measured by St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ). For the wider application in clinical practice, it has been validated in many countries. We evaluated the reliabilit...

background: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (copd) is a chronic respiratory disease, which reduces the lung function and causes respiratory symptoms over time, and it is primarily associated with shortness of breath, cough and sputum production. roflumilast, which is a long-acting selective inhibitor, reduces the anti-inflammatory effect of the main symptoms of copd. the aim of this study...

BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by non-reversible airflow limitation. A common symptom of COPD is dyspnea or shortness of breath. Dyspnea may vary daily, with a large impact on patients' lives. Previous clinical trials used patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures that quantified dyspnea at discrete intervals and hence did not reflect this variability. Re...

INTRODUCTION Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Patients with COPD are characterised by a reduced health status, which can be easily assessed by the COPD Assessment Test (CAT). Previous studies show that health status can be worsened by the presence of comorbidities. However, the impact of cardiovascular comorbidities on health status as as...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of disability in all its stages, and death in patients with moderate or severe obstruction. At present, COPD is suboptimally managed; current health is often not measured properly and hardly taken into account in management plans, and the future risk for patients with regard to health status and quality of life is not being evaluat...

BACKGROUND There is some evidence that quality of life measured by long disease-specific questionnaires may predict exacerbations in asthma and COPD, however brief quality of life tools, such as the Airways Questionnaire 20 (AQ20) or the Clinical COPD Questionnaire (CCQ), have not yet been evaluated as predictors of hospital exacerbations. OBJECTIVES To determine the ability of brief specific...

BACKGROUND The clinical diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) should be considered in any patient who has dyspnea, chronic cough or sputum production, and diagnosis should be confirmed by performing spirometry in presence of airflow limitation. The aim of this study was to assess the validity of a questionnaire used to detect COPD based on spirometry findings. MATERIALS AN...