Friday, September 17, 2010

COPD exacerbations impact overall course of disease

---in several ways according to this article.

One underappreciated but well documented point made in the paper is that acute pulmonary function declines associated with exacerbations tend to persist long after the infection or other precipitant clears, with some patients requiring weeks to return to baseline lung function. Thus it's easy to imagine how frequent exacerbations, each occurring before full recovery from the last one, can accelerate the patient's overall decline.

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