Study protocol : determinants of treatment success in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Abstract

COPD is a common, complex and heterogeneous disease. General objective is to identify factors which correction can be translated into improved health care for COPD patients. The study will take place in Guimarães hospital’s outpatient pulmonology care. COPD outpatients over 40 years of age, will be enrolled sequentially in order of appearance in the consultation during a one-year period. The most relevant demographic and clinical patients’ characteristics will be studied using appropriate tools, and will be transformed into variables, which will be used for descriptive and inferential analysis. The variables degree of severity, medication adherence, beliefs about the disease and about the inhaled medications, and the inhalation technique are intended to be related to each other, in order to understand the relative weight of each of these variables under study as factors of therapeutic success in COPD.