Abstract
An essential problem of patients presenting COPD is the higher annual drop in the volume of forced expiratory volume per second (FEV1). We wanted to investigate whether this drop related to the number disease exacerbations.
The authors selected retrospectively 50 COPD patients (33 men, 27 women), who were under observation for at least 24 +- 2 months. The mean age of the patients was 62.8 +-9.2 years.
The mean annual drop in FEV1 was 116 +- 92 ml. The average number of exacerbations in one patient per year was 2 +- 1.5.
Spearman' correlation coefficient of the number of excerbations and the drop in FEV1 was 0.17 (p = 0.25, N.S.). The authors could not demonstrate a significant correlation between the number of COPD exacerbations and the annual drop in FEV1.