Quality of Life in Patients With Stable Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Presenting to a Medical College Hospital in West Bengal: A Cross Sectional Study

Introduction: COPD, the 4th leading cause of death worldwide, is a major cause of chronic morbidity and mortality. Quality of life, the major focus for improvement in COPD, is thought to vary with the disease severity. Studies from India on the topic are far fewer in number, but it becomes imperative to know whether the severity of COPD in stable state which still contributes largely to the basis for the decision of therapeutic modality, really has association with the quality of life in Indian, particularly Eastern Indian, patients. Aims And Objectives: a) Measure quality of life in these patients with stable COPD. b) To derive association of quality of life with severity of stable COPD (GOLD grading of COPD). Materials And Methods: This study was an institution based cross sectional observational study. Consecutive 111 stable COPD patients of both sexes of 40 years age or older were included based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Study variables assessed in the study were- 1) Demographic variables viz. age, sex, body mass index (BMI), smoking status, 2) Severity variables viz. GOLD grading of COPD, number of exacerbations and number of hospitalisations in the preceding year, 3) Quality of life (QOL) variable viz CAT score. The association of CAT score with GOLD grading was estimated using one way ANOVA test. P value of < 0.05 was considered statistically signicant. Observations: Mean age of the study population was 60.3 + 8.73 years. Majority of study COPD cases was male (87.39%), underweight (53.15%) and smoker (87%). Almost all female patients had exposure to biomass fuel. Majority of our patients (44.14%) belonged to GOLD grades 2 COPD. 71.17% COPD patients were frequent exacerbators. Overall COPD cases suffered poor quality of life (mean CAT score of 21) with more than half (53.15%) of the patients reported high adverse impact (CAT score of >20 to 30) of COPD on their quality of life. One way ANOVA showed statistically signicant association between GOLD grading and CAT score. Conclusion: This study shows that patients of stable COPD from the Indian population (Eastern India) suffer poor quality of life and the said quality of life deteriorates with increasing (worsening) severity of COPD.