Complex approach to assessment of functional status of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

BACKGROUND: Considering the economic costs of managing patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as the high mortality and disability rate, it is necessary to improve the diagnosis of the disease, to look for new approaches to assessing the functional status of patients. AIM: Is to study the functional status of patients with COPD. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A comprehensive approach was applied to assess the functional status of patients: the data of the 6-minute walk test (6MWT), heart rate variability (HRV) was studied, ergoreflex was assessed according to HRV data. 64 patients with COPD and 41 male volunteers without respiratory diseases older than 40 years were examined. Statistical processing of the obtained results was carried out using the licensed package of applied statistical programs Excel 2010 and Statistica 10. RESULTS: The group of patients with COPD and the respondents of the control group were comparable in terms of body mass index, heart rate, respiratory rate, index of indicators of activity of regulatory systems (p > 0.05). As expected, during the 6MWT, differences were obtained between the studied groups in terms of the distance covered (p < 0.01). Similarly, the results of the study of the function of external respiration showed a statistically significant difference in all the studied parameters (p < 0.01). The results obtained confirmed the presence of impaired respiratory function in the group of patients with COPD. Analysis of HRV values, when conducting a test with external peripheral vascular occlusion, confirmed ergoreflex hyperactivity in patients with COPD. CONCLUSION: The integration of methods for routine clinical diagnostics of patients condition (spirometry, 6-minute walk test, assessment of autonomic status) and the introduction of the study of ergoreflex activity made it possible to expand the understanding of the functional state of patients with COPD and is of great interest for further research.