Correlation of Body Mass Index with the Severity of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease as per GOLD Criteria

Introduction: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide that causes more than 2.7 million deaths in 2000 and it will be the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020. [1, 2] The association between low body mass index (BMI) and poor prognosis of patients with COPD is a common clinical observation and it varies with different stages of COPD. Aim & Objectives: To study the Correlation of body mass index (BMI) with the severity of Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Material and Methods: All outdoor & indoor patients attending the department of Respiratory Medicine with clinical history consistent with COPD during January 2018 to June 2019 and diagnosed so as per GOLD guidelines (7), were enrolled. All enrolled patients were subjected to detailed clinical evaluation and investigations. Inclusion Criteria for the study included: a) Age 40 and above, b) Stable disease for at least 3 months and c) Willingness of the patient to participate in study. Exclusion Criteria included: a) Use of systemic steroids in the past 3 months, b) Presence of present or past history of wheeze, chest tightness, eye allergy, nasal allergy or skin allergy, suggesting bronchial asthma and/or c) Presence of other illnesses like active pulmonary tuberculosis, Malignancy, Renal or Hepatic disease. A written informed consent was taken from all the patients after explaining the study protocol. Results: Among 260 study population, 11 (4.23 %) patients were in stage 1, 110 (42.30 %) in stage 2, 111 (42.69 %) in stage 3, and 28 (10.76 %) in stage 4. we found that BMI of the patients were decreasing with severity of the disease (GOLD) and it was statistically significant (P less than 0.05). The BMI was better in the study populations where post FEV1 % predicted value was higher. Conclusion: In our study we found out that there was a positive correlation presents in between BMI and severity of obstruction in COPD patients.