A significant proportion of patients presenting with symptoms of obstructive lung disease has features of both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), referred to as the asthma–COPD overlap syndrome (ACOS). However, so far there is no generally agreed term or defining features for this category of patients with chronic airway obstruction. Current article is adopted from the study that describe an algorithm for identifying possible ACOS in adults with newly diagnosed COPD by applying different diagnostic criteria in a large cohort of individuals at high risk of COPD.
Description of cohort Baseline characteristics of enrolled subjects A total of 241 general practitioners participated in the study. Of the 4,049 screened subjects, 3,875 (95.7%; 50% males; mean age 57 years (range 35–92 years)) fulfilled the inclusion criteria, and were included in the analysis. Of the…
