Abstract
COPD remains largely undiagnosed or is diagnosed late in the course of disease. We report findings of a specialist outreach programme to identify undiagnosed COPD in primary care. An electronic case-finding algorithm identified 1602 at-risk patients from 12 practices who were invited to attend the clinic. Three hundred and eighty-three (23.9%) responded and 288 were enrolled into the study. Forty-eight (16.6%) had undiagnosed mild and 28 (9.7%) had moderate airway obstruction, meeting spirometric diagnostic criteria for COPD. However, at 12 months only 8 suspected COPD patients (10.6%) had received a diagnostic label in their primary care record. This constituted 0.38% of the total patient population, as compared with 0.31% of control practices, p = 0.306. However, if all patients with airway obstruction received a coding of COPD, then the diagnosis rate in the intervention group would have risen by 0.84%. Despite the low take-up and diagnostic yield, this programme suggests that integrated case-finding strategies could improve COPD recognition.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 7 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | NPJ Primary Care Respiratory Medicine |
Volume | 31 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 11 Feb 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2021 |
Keywords
- Humans
- Primary Health Care
- Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive/diagnosis
- Spirometry