Case finding identifies chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Smokers with a chronic cough who are older than 60 have a 48% chance of having bronchial obstruction. Van Schayck and colleagues (p 1370) studied 651 smokers in two general practices. They found that 201 smokers were not taking drugs for a pulmonary condition and 18% of these had an FEV₁ <80% of predicted. Chronic cough and increasing age were also good predictors of pulmonary obstruction. The authors conclude that case finding, rather than screening a whole practice population, is a feasible method for identifying chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in general practice and can be implemented by practice assistants.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Detecting patients at a high risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in general practice: cross sectional case finding study

C P van Schayck, J M C Loozen, E Wagena, R P Akkermans, and G J Wesseling
BMJ 2002 324: 1370. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]