Early Identification of Exacerbations in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) have a substantial effect on overall disease management, health system costs, and patient outcomes. However, exacerbations are often underdiagnosed or recognized with great delay due to several factors such as patients' inability to differentiate between acute episodes and symptom fluctuations, delays in seeking medical assistance, and disparities in dyspnea perception. Self-management intervention plans, telehealth and smartphone-based programs provide educational material, counseling, virtual hospitals and telerehabilitation, and help COPD patients to identify exacerbations early. Moreover, biomarkers such as blood eosinophil count, fibrinogen, CRP, Serum amyloid A(SAA),together with imaging parameters such as the pulmonary artery-to-aorta diameter ratio, have emerged as potential predictors of exacerbations, yet their clinical utility is limited by variability and lack of specificity. In this review, we provide information regarding the importance of the early identification of exacerbation events in COPD patients and the available methods which can be used for this purpose.