Abstract
Purpose: To determine a possible correlation between objective laboratory data on the health of patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and the subjective perception of disease and quality of life by patients themselves. Also to investigate whether these two factors are consistent and whether there are corresponding changes over time after therapeutic intervention.
Methods: We studied 100 patients with COPD who completed the general health questionnaire SF-36 and the qualified for COPD questionnaire St. George's (SGRQ) and were classified into four groups (four stages of COPD by GOLD) based on their spirometric performance (FEV1) during the first session of the investigation. After 6 months of specific treatment for each group, the patients returned for a new spirometry and completed the two questionnaires again. The same happened with 20 controls who received absolutely no treatment.
Results: There was a direct correlation between FEV1 values with the scores of both SGRQ and SF-36 questionnaires in all study groups during both sessions. Following the therapeutic intervention, improvement of FEV1 values with corresponding changes in the scores of questionnaires were observed in all patient groups. However, statistically significant differences emerged in only two groups of patients raising issues of medication revision taken by the other two groups.
Conclusion: It was confirmed that the subjective perception of COPD patients are consistent with objective findings that characterize its course, and therefore both questionnaires used to measure the quality of life are reliable and record the changes.
- © 2012 ERS