Echocardiographic Evaluation of Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Abstract

There is an overlap of risk factors between heart disease and COPD like cigarette smoking, sedentary lifestyle and old age. The economic burden of COPD is also very high. It is now proven that the only strategy which can reduce COPD incidence is cessation of smoking. The Aim of the present research is to study the Two-dimensional transthoracic Echocardiography (TTE) findings in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).The method is that all the enrolled patients were subjected to chest radiography, pulmonary function test, Two-dimensional transthoracic echocardiogram and Doppler study, according to the standard protocol. The findings in our study are consistent with previous studies about the COPD. Total 111(60.7%) of the patients had echocardiographic evidence of pulmonary hypertension and 83(45.4%) of the patients in this study had evidence of cor pulmonale.  We found significant difference between the duration of smoking and severity of the disease based on FEV1 values (p= 0.005). A significant moderate inverse correlation existed between pack years of smoking and FEV1 scores. (r= - 0.379, P < 0.001).