Nearly seven out of 10 people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are undiagnosed, a situation that can lead to worse long-term health outcomes and lower quality of life than if a person had received diagnosis and treatment earlier, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports. Doctors say that they have seen patients with symptoms of COPD or asthma for years but there has been no diagnosis. Â
Therefore, they did this study where we looked at people who were diagnosed with no previous history of asthma or COPD and we diagnosed them. They have impaired work performance and impaired work attendance because they’re taking days off because of their respiratory symptoms. These are people that are suffering sort of silently because they’re not, they’re either not seeing their doctors, or their doctors are not doing the proper diagnosis.Â
Researchers surveyed more than 26,000 people about shortness of breath and lung function to find a group of 595 asthma and COPD diagnoses, which were confirmed using a gold-standard spirometry test. Of this group, 508 agreed to participate in a clinical study where half received typical clinical care for these conditions and the other half had regular visits with a lung specialist. Both groups received help with 92% of those seeing lung specialists receiving new medications to treat the conditions as well as 60% of those who received usual care.Â
Those who saw lung specialists took fewer trips to the doctor in the following year (0.53 compared to 1.12 per participant) and had larger improvements on the St. George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (10-point increase compared to less than 7) when compared to their counterparts receiving usual care.Â
Researchers reported that both groups also improved far more than if they had remained undiagnosed. They said a four-point improvement on the respiratory questionnaire represents a significant increase in health and quality of life, which each study group experienced. On some level, the findings of this study are common sense. Of course, people with an undiagnosed medical condition do better after receiving a diagnosis.Â
However, beneath that is the more probing question of just why so many people go undiagnosed with serious respiratory illnesses. The answer is multi-faceted, but one reason, especially where COPD is concerned, is that it tends to hit people later in life, which can make the symptoms easier to ignore until they progress to an undeniable state.Â
This study is important because there has been a lot of negativities for most of my education and career around COPD, especially as being an end-stage and hopeless disease for which treatment is not correct, so COPD particularly suffers from a major PR problem. While patients with COPD can help their symptoms with lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking and exercising, there are still many other effective medical treatments available that they can discuss with their doctor to further improve their symptoms, which will also improve their quality of life.Â
