EDITORIAL
Inhaled corticosteroids in COPD
Inhaled corticosteroids in COPD: a light at the end of the tunnel?
1 Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Royal Free and University College Medical School, University College London
2 Senior Lecturer, University of West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor J A Wedzicha
Royal Free and University College Medical School, Rowland Hill Street, Hampstead, London NW3 2PF, UK; j.a.wedzicha@medsch.ucl.ac.uk
Some promising findings on the effects of inhaled corticosteroids on mortality in COPD
Keywords: inhaled corticosteroids; mortality; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is arguably the most common chronic disease of the lungs at present and, by 2020, it will be the third leading cause of death worldwide.1 COPD is associated with a relentless decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and, in the later stages, the condition progresses to pulmonary hypertension and hypoxic respiratory failure.
Few interventions have been shown to affect the outcome of COPD. The Lung Health Study-1 (LHS-1) showed that smoking cessation decreases the accelerated decline in FEV1 characteristic of this disease2 and, more recently, that smoking cessation is associated with decreases in cardiovascular and lung cancer mortality in patients with COPD.3 Furthermore, two randomised controlled studies of long term oxygen therapy (LTOT) showed that LTOT improves mortality in patients with COPD complicated by hypoxic respiratory failure.4,5
Because so few interventions have been shown to affect mortality
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Thorax 2005 60: 977.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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