Natural history of COPD: gaps and opportunities

Understanding the natural history of a disease is as important as knowing its cause(s) for effective disease prevention and treatment. Yet, our current understanding of the natural history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is incomplete and often controversial. This article discusses the current gaps, and hence opportunities for research, in this field. In particular, it discusses the following six specific questions. 1) Is COPD a “single” disease? 2) Is COPD “only” a lung disease? 3) When does COPD begin or what is “early” COPD? 4) How does COPD “progress”? 5) How do we assess disease “severity”? 6) Can COPD be prevented (beyond smoking cessation) or its course be modified once detected? A new review series starts in ERJ Open Research: “Gaps in our understanding of COPD” http://ow.ly/CFSD30gpXs8

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  ERJ Open Research

• Publication date

  2017-10-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1183/23120541.00117-2017PMID 29255718PMCID 5731770
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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