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. 2018 Aug 3;19(1):147.
doi: 10.1186/s12931-018-0853-5.

The diagnostic performance of patient symptoms in screening for COPD

Kate M Johnson  1 , Wan C Tan  2 , Jean Bourbeau  3 , Don D Sin  2   4 , Mohsen Sadatsafavi  5   6   7 ; Canadian Cohort of Obstructive Lung Disease (CanCOLD) study and the Canadian Respiratory Research Network
Collaborators, Affiliations

The diagnostic performance of patient symptoms in screening for COPD

Kate M Johnson et al. Respir Res. .

Abstract

It is recommended that screening for COPD be restricted to symptomatic individuals, but supporting evidence is lacking. We determined the performance of wheeze, cough, phlegm, and dyspnea in discriminating COPD versus non-COPD in a population-based sample of 1332 adults. Area Under the Receiver Operating Curves (AUC) indicated that symptoms had modest performance whether assessed individually (AUCs 0.55-0.62), or in combination (AUC for number of symptoms as the predictor 0.64). AUC improved with the inclusion of multiple other factors (AUC 0.71). Restricting screening to symptomatic individuals is unlikely to substantially improve the yield of general population screening for undiagnosed COPD.

Keywords: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Population; Respiratory symptoms; Screening test.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval for CanCOLD was obtained from the relevant institutional review board at each study site. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to study entry.

Not applicable.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for a model with all of the symptoms and covariates included (‘All variables’), as well as for each of the symptoms individually and the total number of symptoms reported by study participants (‘Total symptoms’)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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