[Differences between family physicians and pulmonary specialists in the treatment of COPD patients]

This cross-sectional study comprised 223 patients with moderate asthma or chronic bronchitis (FEV1 > 50% of the predicted value) from 29 general practices in the catchment area of Nijmegen University. Fifty-six patients were treated by 19 chest physicians, the remaining 167 by 29 general practitioners, without specialist care. In the study population no relevant differences in sex, age, smoking behaviour or severity of the disease (symptoms, lung function, and bronchial hyperreactivity) could be observed between the two groups of patients, except for allergy. Chest physicians prescribed on average almost three times as much medication as general practitioners. We could identify only a weak relationship between the severity of the disease (symptoms and pulmonary function combined) and the prescribed pharmacotherapy: with rising degrees of severity the general practitioner prescribes more bronchodilators, the specialist more inhaled corticosteroids. No relationship could be observed between bronchial hyperreactivity and the prescribed pharmacotherapy. No response to prescribed bronchodilators was found in 16% of the patients treated by the general practitioner and in 20% of the patients treated by the specialist. On the basis of this cross-sectional study no well-defined treatment policy of patients with moderate asthma or chronic bronchitis either by the general practitioner or by the lung specialist could be found.