TY - JOUR T1 - Exacerbations in non-COPD patients: truth or myth—authors’ response JF - Thorax JO - Thorax SP - 1050 LP - 1051 DO - 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2014-205889 VL - 69 IS - 11 AU - Wan C Tan AU - Jean Bourbeau AU - Shawn Aaron AU - J Mark FitzGerald AU - Paul Hernandez AU - Robert Cowie AU - Kenneth R Chapman AU - Darcy Marciniuk AU - Francois Maltais AU - Sonia Buist AU - Denis O'Donnell AU - Don D Sin Y1 - 2014/11/01 UR - http://thorax.bmj.com/content/69/11/1050.2.abstract N2 - Dear Sir,We are grateful to Dr Khurana and Dr Aggarwal for their interest1 in our paper.2 On their first point, we agree that we should be careful about terminology. We evaluated a random sample of individuals representative of the general population rather than patients, so the findings that episodes of respiratory events occurred in these subjects would likely reflect real events in the general population. Furthermore, our study definition for exacerbations was the same standard questionnaire criteria for exacerbations used in clinical trials of selected patients with COPD.3 On the second point on aetiologies for non-COPD subgroup in this study, we would like to emphasise that ‘non-COPD’ was defined by the absence of chronic airflow limitation using the standard, although arbitrary spirometric criteria. We excluded those individuals with self-reported chronic obstructive lung diseases, … ER -