Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: missed diagnosis versus misdiagnosis:

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

#### Summary box By 2004 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was claimed to be the fourth most important cause of death worldwide,1 and its global prevalence and mortality are on the increase.2 Smoking accounts for about 75% of cases,3 but environmental exposures to tobacco smoke and other pollutants such as biomass fuels and occupational exposures may account for the remaining cases.4 5 6 COPD is a progressive disease, and in the later stages patients have frequent admissions to hospital, with over a third being readmitted in 30 days, contributing to an annual cost of £800m (€1bn; $1.24bn) in the UK.7 In the UK concern has …