About 3 million people in the UK have a disease affecting the lungs called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). This is a chronic disease that usually requires daily inhaled medication to stop symptoms including difficulty in breathing, cough and wheeze. Over the past two decades there have been significant changes in the inhaled medications available. These medications are nearly always prescribed by a persons General Practioner (GP) but there is no published information telling us which type of medications are usually prescribed, and how this has changed over time with the changes in medications. There are five main types of medication and all can be given together. In this study we wish to simply describe which medications have been prescribed in the UK between 2000 and 2016. This information will help us understand people with COPD better. It may also give us an idea if GPs tend to follow lung specialist recommendations on which inhaled medications should be prescribed.
We will identify all COPD patients in CPRD database between 2000 and 2016 using a validated algorithm. We will first total all prescriptions each year and by their medication class. We will then identify all prevalent prescriptions and all incident prescriptions year-on-year, from 2000 to 2016. We will also describe in the year 2016 the patients that are in each of the medication classed, including demographics and disease specific variables such as spirometry and dyspnoea score. The description will include COPD exacerbations therefore only CPRD linked data will be used for this part (to include both GP treated and hospital treated exacerbations).
Prescription of COPD inhalers and characteristic of patients using different inhaled medication classes
Jennifer Quint - Chief Investigator - Imperial College London
Chloe Bloom - Corresponding Applicant - Imperial College London
HES Admitted Patient Care;ONS Death Registration Data