Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and comorbidities

Abstract

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of mortality worldwide. Although it is well known that comorbidities are highly prevalent in patients with COPD, they are not considered for treatment effect analysis. Aims and objectives: To observe frequency of comorbidities in patients with COPD and compare its distribution in 4 GOLD groups. Methods: Observational cross sectional study was designed to identify comorbidities related with categorized disease groups. Patients with COPD treated at University Hospital Centre were included. Severity of COPD was estimated and number of comorbidities was counted. Comorbidity was defined as the presence of disorder in addition to COPD irrespective of their relation to COPD. Results: We enrolled 460 COPD patients (68,5% males; average age at diagnosis 61,3 years. Majority of patients were in GOLD group A (41%) and B (29%), followed by group D (25%) and C (5%). Comorbidities were present in 90% of patients, with 31% of patients with 1 comorbidity, 31% with 2 comorbidities and 28% with 3 or more (mean of 1.9).There was no significant difference in number of comorbidities among GOLD groups (P=0.81). Most common comorbidities were arterial hypertension (47%), lung neoplasm (40%) and cardiovascular diseases (23%). Conclusions: We showed that COPD is rarely diagnosed as an isolated condition, since different comorbidities were present in 90% of patients. Hypertension, lung neoplasms and cardiovascular diseases were revealed as the most common ones. High proportion of lung cancer can be attributed to searching for COPD in lung cancer patients. A multidimensional COPD diagnosis approach should be taken into account when classifying COPD patients into GOLD groups.