Review Suggests Combining Approaches for Identifying COPD

A review evaluating the methodological approaches of identifying chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) found that when more criteria are combined, the detection of CPOD is more accurate in terms of sensitivity and specificity.

Researchers conducted a systematic literature review of data from January 2000 through October 2018 using Medline via PubMed and Google Scholar. A manual review of the collected studies was then conducted with at least two independent raters.

In total, 151 publications were assembled and reviewed. Following the title and abstract screening, 39 papers were assessed. The most frequently used criteria set to identify COPD patients included the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, hospitalization, and ambulatory visits.

“In general, it can be concluded that the more criteria are combined, the more accurate is the detection of COPD patients in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Drug data is by far the most comprehensive source of information if used alone,” concluded the authors.

Click here to read to the full article on AJMC.