Prevalence of comorbidities in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with many comorbidities, but the percentage of COPD patients who develop comorbidities has not been clearly defined.

Objectives: We aimed to examine the relationship between COPD and comorbidities using information obtained from the Health Search Database (HSD) owned by the Italian College of General Practitioners (SIMG), which stores information on about 1.5% of the total Italian population served by general practitioners.

Methods: We conducted a population-based retrospective study using information obtained from the HSD. The software system used codes all the diagnostic records using the 9th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases.

Results: Compared to the non-COPD people, COPD patients were at increased risk for cardiovascular events [ischemic heart disease (6.9% in the general population vs. 13.6% in COPD patients), cardiac arrhythmia (6.6% in the general population vs. 15.9% in COPD patients), heart failure (2.0% in the general population vs. 7.9% in COPD patients), and other forms of heart disease (10.7% in the general population vs. 23.1% in COPD patients); with a higher impact of COPD in the elderly]; non-psychotic mental disorders, including depressive disorders (29.1% in the general population vs. 41.6% in COPD patients; with a higher impact of COPD on women aged <75 years); diabetes mellitus (10.5% in the general population vs. 18.7% in COPD patients); osteoporosis (10.8% in the general population vs. 14.8% in COPD patients), with a higher impact of COPD on women aged <75 years, and malignant pulmonary neoplasms (0.4% in the general population vs. 1.9% in COPD patients).

Conclusions: Our results indicate that COPD is a risk factor for these comorbid conditions.