Medical management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has recently been a major focus of research offering hope for therapeutic advances. This effort is in part energized by the recognition that approximately 24 million adults in the United States have evidence of impaired lung function and experience 9.5 million office and emergency room visits, 726,000 hospitalizations, and 119,000 deaths each year . While the death rate finally appears to be stabilizing in the United States at this unacceptable rate, the problem is still escalating worldwide . Factors that impair more rapid progress in COPD treatment include misconceptions that the disease is irreversible and untreatable, lack of consensus on optimal functional outcome parameters, and incomplete understanding of appropriate short-term surrogate markers representing disease-modifying activity of new agents that might take years to manifest their anatomic, physiologic, and clinical effects.

Source: Chest Surgery Clinics of North America - November 1, 2003 Category: Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery Authors: Frank C Sciurba Source Type: research