Clinical course and prognosis of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a basically benign disease, but the prognosis is so poor that the mortality rate is similar to some malignant diseases. Depending on the disease severity, the 5-year mortality rate of patients with COPD varies from 40 to 70%. The three major causes of death have been identified as COPD itself, lung cancer, and cardiovascular disease. The following factors have been reported to be related to survival: FEV1 (especially the maximal attainable lung function), age, gender, PaO2, PaCO2, body weight, and comorbidity. There have been several large-scale randomized clinical trials to examine the prophylactic effects of inhaled anti-cholinergics and inhaled corticosteroids on the annual decline in FEV1. However, unfortunately, in all of the published studies, these drugs had no effect on the annual decline in FEV1.
Nishimura
K
K
Department of Respiratory Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan.
Tsukino
M
M
D002423:Cause of Death; D005260:Female; D005541:Forced Expiratory Volume; D006801:Humans; D008173:Lung Diseases, Obstructive / Q000401:mortality* / Q000628:therapy; D008297:Male; D010102:Oxygen Inhalation Therapy; D011379:Prognosis; D012737:Sex Factors; D016019:Survival Analysis