The Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Which Symptom is Most Important to Monitor?

GOLD 2023 defines an exacerbation of COPD (ECOPD) by a deterioration of breathlessness at rest (BaR), mucus and cough. The severity of an ECOPD is determined by the degree of BaR, ranging from 0 to 10. However, it is not known which symptom is the most important one to detect early of an ECOPD, and which symptom that predicts future ECOPDs best. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to find out which symptom is the most important one to monitor.

We analysed data on COPD symptoms from the telehealth study The eHealth Diary. Frequent exacerbators (n = 27) were asked to daily monitor BaR and breathlessness at physical activity (BaPA), mucus and cough, employing a digital pen and symptom scales (0-10). Twenty-seven patients with 105 ECOPDs were analysed. The association between symptom development and the occurrence of exacerbations was evaluated using the Andersen-Gill formulation of the Cox proportional hazards model for the analysis of recurrent time-to-event data with time-varying predictors.

According to the criteria proposed by GOLD 2023, 42% ECOPDs were mild, 48% were moderate and 5% were severe, while 6% were undefinable. Mucus and cough improved over study time, while BaR and BaPA deteriorated. Mucus appeared earliest, which was the most prominent feature of the average exacerbation, and worsening of mucus increased the risk for a future ECOPD. There was a 58% increase in the risk of exacerbation per unit increase in mucus score.

This study suggests that mucus worsening is the most important COPD symptom to monitor to detect ECOPDs early and to predict future risk för ECOPDs. In the present study, we also noticed a pronounced difference between GOLD 2022 and 2023. Hence, GOLD 2023 defined the ECOPD severity much lower than GOLD 2022 did.