[Diagnosis and examination for COPD; medical interview/physical finding/ blood examination]

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) is common disease. To diagnose COPD, pulmonary function test is required, however, usual physical examination and medical interview are both crucial. From both of them, we can acquire very important information and also this information will tell us much rather than pulmonary function test or images. In this article, we would like to summarize recent update about these topics. We focused on history taking from patients, examination of physical finding, and some possible biomarkers from blood examination. All of them may represent several important information of each patients, such as severity of disease, risk of future events, and also prognosis. For all physicians, it is necessary to evaluate these things.