© 2003 BMJ Publishing Group & British Thoracic Society
EDITORIAL
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Patients with COPD: do we fail them from beginning to end?
Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine, NHLI at Charing Cross Hospital, London W6 8RP, UK; m.partridge@imperial.ac.uk
Respiratory physicians should take some responsibility for what could be regarded as the neglect of patients with COPD and need to raise the profile of the disease with governments and funding bodies. The aim is to prevent its cause, modify its natural history, focus research and ensure the implementation of all measures that may reduce the suffering.
Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In the UK 17 500 men and 14 500 women die every year from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Work reported in this issue of Thorax suggests that these figures are likely to be falsely low.1 The published death rate compares with 13 000 women dying of breast cancer and 9500 men dying of prostate cancer every year. Both of the latter two diseases now attract much publicity, considerable research expenditure and, for breast cancer at least, a very expensive health service screening programme, the value of which is continually debated. Globally, COPD is the fourth or fifth leading cause of death and both morbidity and mortality are predicted to rise. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is one of the few organisations to have recognised the impending burden of this disease to both the individual and to society, publishing both a consultation document on the development
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