Effect of Electrocardiographic Findings on Mortality of Acute Exacerbation of Copd- An Observational Study

An exacerbation of COPD is defined as an acute worsening of respiratory symptoms that result in additional therapy. COPD is currently the fourth leading cause of death in the world. There is a need for prospective trials in COPD based on hard clinical outcomes such as death to bring improvements in clinical managements. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) ranks fourth as a cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease, cancer, and stroke. COPD is a costly disease with both direct costs (value of health care resource devoted to diagnosis and management) and indirect costs (monetary consequences of disability, missed work, premature mortality and caregiver or family costs resulting from the illness 1) . Diagnostics test for COPD is spirometry FEV1/FVC. Spirometry is costly and is not readily available in rural settings and the technique to perform spirometry involves a lot of patient's conscious effort. Whereas ECG is easily available, affordable, does not require patient's conscious effort. We wanted to predict the electrocardiographic findings predicting mortality in acute exacerbation of COPD.