Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive lung disease that causes decreasing lung function over time and affects over 2.6 million Canadians. There is no cure for COPD, and modifying risk factors such as smoking in the early stages of disease offers the best chance to improve patient outcomes. Unfortunately, because 70% of patients with COPD are not diagnosed, this opportunity is largely being missed. Several authorities have suggested systematic programs to diagnose COPD during the routine healthcare visits of high-risk individuals. However, these programs rely on sufficient points of contact between undiagnosed COPD patients and the healthcare system. We used health databases to examine the healthcare encounters of patients before they received a diagnosis of COPD. We found that COPD patients frequently visit their pharmacist, family doctor, and specialist doctors for other diseases in the five years before diagnosis. 87% of patients visited a family doctor for reasons related to their lungs in the five years before they were diagnosed with COPD. These types of visits may present ideal opportunities for detecting undiagnosed COPD. Improving the early diagnosis of COPD can increase patient quality of life, reduce mortality, and decrease the burden on healthcare systems.