Thorax 2000;55:537-538 ( July )

Editorial

Supplementary oxygen therapy in COPD: is it really useful?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Many patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) develop hypoxaemia at rest when awake as their disease progresses. This may or may not be accompanied by hypercapnia but is a poor prognostic feature, independent of the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV₁).¹ For many years the scientific study of COPD was driven by the need to gain a greater understanding of the processes which led to these disorders of gas exchange. Ultimately this led to the introduction of effective treatment designed to increase the arterial oxygen tension beyond 8.0 kPa for at least 15 hours per day. The well known randomised controlled trials which confirmed the survival benefit of this treatment^2 3 are also the cornerstone of evidence based oxygen prescribing.⁴ Since these results were published in the 1980s the costs of oxygen therapy have increased steadily in the UK and elsewhere⁵ and constitute one of the largest medical expenses, . . . [Full text of this article]

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