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Caring for the burden of COPD

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor P M A Calverley
Division of Infection and Immunity, Clinical Sciences Centre, University Hospital Aintree, Liverpool L9 7AL, UK; pmacal@liverpool.ac.uk

Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; elderly; organisation of care; resources; audit; outcomes

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

In the five years since the publication of the first Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (GOLD) report,¹ awareness of COPD has increased appreciably. The early hope that the problem of COPD would recede as smoking numbers fell has not been realised, partly because of the ageing population in developed countries and the increase in tobacco consumption and air pollution in developing economies.² This problem is strikingly illustrated by the high prevalence of COPD recorded in the PLATINO study from South America which used carefully standardised techniques to make comparisons between five large South American cities where the prevalence of COPD varied from 7.8% to 19%.³

The problem of COPD is therefore rather larger than many had anticipated, but we are not short of effective responses to it. Intensive smoking cessation programmes can produce long term benefits, although it may take many years . . . [Full text of this article]

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