About chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
There are several different drug types used in the management of hypertension. This back to basics provides a useful summary of the different antihypertensive drug classes and how they act to regulate blood pressure.
Back to Basics: Respiratory drugs
Case study: Nurse COPD assessment
This case describes a 56-year old male with a productive cough and worsening breathlessness who presented to a practice nurse. This case study was part of a Health Assessment module at the University of Surrey. The case study was supervised by a GP.
Sponsored feature: Identification of malnutrition in COPD patients
People with COPD should be reviewed at least annually according to the Quality and Outcomes Framework. However, there is little mention of the importance of assessing nutritional status and no ‘QOF’ points for doing so. This article describes the assessment and management of COPD patients with a risk of malnutrition.
Promoting best practice in COPD management
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) has a major impact on the health and quality of life of patients and there is often co-morbidity with cardiovascular disease. Well planned and structured training for the primary care team could have a major impact on outcomes.
Gender and quality of life in COPD: A systematic review
Morbidity and mortality for women with COPD is increasing. This systematic review uncovers how women seem to experience COPD differently to men, and helps health care professionals to provide an individualised approach to caring for these patients.
COPD: Serious, chronic and becoming more common in women
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a largely preventable, slowly progressive, inflammatory disease. Rates of COPD are rising faster in women than in men, yet women are less likely to be diagnosed. There is currently no cure, but best-practice management outlined in recently updated NICE guidelines can help to improve patients’ symptoms and quality of life.
Breathing new life into managing patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cardiovascular disease
Chronic clinical conditions have traditionally been regarded as individual disease categories within individual patients, although there is often considerable overlap across clinical systems. However, for those managing these patients the presence of various co-morbidities is all-too apparent. It may be time to consider a new approach to management of these patients.
Cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is nearly double the rate in the general population without COPD. And for those with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and COPD, heart failure is the most common cause of hospitalisation.
The breathless patient: Is it asthma or COPD?
Breathlessness is a very common problem in the patients we see in general practice, and
there is a range of possible causes. In this article – the first in a series of three looking
at how to diagnose what’s wrong with a breathless patient – we explore how to
distinguish between two of the commonest respiratory causes of breathlessness,
asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Scoring Top QOF Points for COPD
Preventing and Treating COPD Exacerbations
Acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are common and
have serious implications. They greatly reduce patients’ quality of life and often result
in hospital admissions. Acute exacerbations of COPD are the largest single cause of
emergency respiratory admissions and each exacerbation results in an average hospital
stay of 10.3 days. In this article we review what causes exacerbations in patients with COPD and
how you can help to prevent and treat them effectively.
Oxygen Therapy for COPD: How to use it Safely
Oxygen therapy for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has
recently been hitting the headlines, because major changes in its supply – using
independent contractors – introduced last year initially caused problems in some areas.
In this article, we review why some patients with COPD need oxygen therapy, when it
should be used and how to use it safely.
Optimising nutrition in COPD
Although principally an inflammatory respiratory disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease (COPD) is now recognised as a complex disorder that also manifests in
extrapulmonary and systemic effects. Nutritional manifestations of the disease, notably
weight loss and obesity, have been recognised. However, the complexity of nutritional
problems in COPD has been poorly understood, and the consequences largely underrated. Now,
linked to increasing knowledge regarding systemic inflammation, it is becoming clear that poor
nutritional status is not only a manifestation of COPD but also a predictor of mortality and
healthcare utilisation.
