Chest
Prevalence of Depression and Anxiety in Patients with COPD: Relationship to Functional Capacity
Section snippets
Patient Population
The participants in the study were recruited from the outpatient pulmonary clinic at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Long Beach, California. To be considered as a candidate for participation in this study, the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) of the patient was required to be below 1,250 ml and the ratio of the FEV1 to the forced vital capacity (FVC) was required to be less than 50 percent. In addition, the patient had to be between 40 and 70 years old and with his
RESULTS
The demographic characteristics of the 45 patients who completed the study are summarized in Table 1. All patients were men. Thirty five of the 45 patients had severe COPD as defined as an FEV1 less than 1,000 ml and/or an FEV1/FVC less than .40. The participants in the study had a substantial amount of emphysema since their mean Dco expressed as percent predicted of the normal value was less than 50 percent. The mean PaO2 was below normal, but only four of the patients (9 percent) had a PaO2
DISCUSSION
The present study documents that there is a high prevalence of depression in patients with moderate or severe COPD. The prevalence of depression in the present study (42 percent) is similar to that reported by McSweeny et al8 in a group of patients with severe COPD (mean FEV1 = 750 ml) and severe hypoxemia (PaO2 < 60 mm Hg). Other studies have also reported that patients with COPD tend to be depressed.3,4,5,7
It appears that the prevalence of depression is higher in patients with COPD than it is
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Ms. Kaye Lines and Ms. Karen Lopresti for performing the pulmonary function testing. We thank Ms. Linda Light for editorial assistance with the manuscript.
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