[Evaluation of the COPD Assessment Test in patients with stable COPD]

The COPD Assessment Test (CAT) is a new simple tool developed for assessing health-related quality of life in patients with COPD. The characteristics of the score derived from the CAT as a function of various parameters of evaluation of the severity of COPD remain to be described.

The CAT was submitted prospectively to 213 consecutive stable ambulatory COPD patients assessed in a tertiary care hospital. The discriminative value of the CAT was analysed as well as its association with various parameters of interest.

The progressive increase in the CAT score with the severity of the disease as assessed by the GOLD stages and the BODE index, as well as the level of dyspnoea, demonstrates the discriminative capacity of the CAT. In multivariate analysis, only the RV/TLC (residual volume/total lung capacity) and the 6-minute walk distance were significantly associated with the CAT score, explaining only 27 % of its variability. The inclusion of dyspnoea in the model explained 42 % of the CAT score variability, only dyspnoea and the RV/TLC ratio being significantly associated.

The CAT has good discriminative characteristics that are similar to more complex tools designed to assess health-related quality of life in patients with COPD.