What is it about?
An examination of the diagnosis of COPD and the reproducibility of spirometric practices in a community hospital to determine the proportion of non-COPD patients discharged as COPD and the rate of spriometry for confirming COPD before hospital discharge.
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Why is it important?
A significant number of patients diagnosed and treated as COPD in the hospital may be inaccurately diagnosed as COPD based on confirmatory spirometry testing. We observed a 30% rate of hospitalized patients had spirometry that was not consistent with the diagnosis of COPD by the international GOLD criteria.
Perspectives
Although this study was at a single hospital, the finding surprised us. Spirometry is not routinely ordered to confirm the diagnosis of COPD and is at a higher than expected rate. In contrast to other common diagnoses like congestive heart failure, which must be verified with echocardiography, there are no quality control measures that enforce the documentation of COPD by using spirometry.
Kimberly Barber
Ascension Health
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Overdiagnosis of COPD in hospitalized patients, International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, August 2017, Dove Medical Press,
DOI: 10.2147/copd.s139919.
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