TY - JOUR T1 - The association between objective CT measures of bronchiectasis and health-related quality of life in COPD JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 44 IS - Suppl 58 SP - 207 AU - Alejandro Diaz AU - James Ross AU - George Washko AU - Raul San Jose Estepar Y1 - 2014/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/Suppl_58/207.abstract N2 - Background: Bronchiectasis is frequent in COPD and linked to increased risk of mortality. Bronchiectasis is diagnosed based on visual assessment, which is challenging to perform in large scale clinical studies. Development of an objective quantitative CT measurement tool could overcome this issue.Objective: We aimed to develop a quantitative CT-based measurement of bronchiectasis and to assess the association between bronchiectasis and health-related quality of life.Methods: The airway inner diameter to adjacent vessel diameter (AVR) was objectively determined in 1,135 smokers with COPD. The scale-space particles method was used to extract the airway and vascular trees and measure the diameters of the airways and vessels. To calculate the AVR, airway particles were paired to their closest vessel particles. Bronchiectasis was defined as an AVR>1. The burden of bronchiectasis per subject was expressed as % of bronchiectatic airways with an AVR>1 for vessels with cross sectional area >10 mm2 (BrA%_10). The assessment for the left lung is reported. Regression analysis was used to assess the association between BrA%_10 and St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) total score.Results: Among the 1,135 COPD subjects, 711 (62.6%) had bronchiectasis. In a model predicting SGRQ score adjusted for age, gender, race, body mass index, pack-years of smoking, history of heart failure, and chronic bronchitis, a 1 increase in BrA%_10 was associated with 5.5 increase in SGRQ total score (P<0.0001).Conclusion: We developed an objective CT-based measurement of bronchiectasis. Increasing burden of bronchiectasis was linked to worsening health-related quality of life. ER -