AbstractIntroduction: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major global health issue. COPD affects pulmonary vasculature as well as heart leading to the development of pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH), corpulmonale (CORP), right and left ventricular dysfunction. Echocardiography is a rapid, noninvasive, portable, and accurate method to evaluate cardiac function in these patients. We performed the echocardiographic evaluation of COPD patients to study the prevalence of heart diseases in these patients.
Materials and Methods: Ours was observational study. Total 125 patients of moderate to severe COPD according to GOLD guidelines were included in the study. All patients were evaluated with detailed history, chest Xray posteroanterior view, electrocardiography (ECG), spirometry and transthoracic echocardiography (Echo).
Results: We investigated 89 males and 36 female patients with mean age of 52.54 ± 9.55 years. Fifteen patients had GOLD class I COPD, 45 patients had GOLD class II COPD and 65 patients had GOLD class III and IV COPD. Breathlessness (100%) was most common presenting symptom and tachypnea (73%) was most common presenting sign. ECG was abnormal in 80% patients with right ventricular hypertrophy (53.6%) as most common finding. Eighty percent patients had abnormal echocardiography with PAH (57.6%) and right ventricular dilatation (49.6%) as the most common findings.
Conclusion: There is significant prevalence of cardiac comorbidities in patients with COPD. Cardiac screening should be done early in the disease which will be helpful in the assessment of the prognosis and to identify the patients who are likely to suffer increase morbidity and mortality.