RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Undetected chronic obstructive lung disorders in patients presenting with acute cough in primary care: Results from the European GRACE study JF European Respiratory Journal JO Eur Respir J FD European Respiratory Society SP 4510 VO 38 IS Suppl 55 A1 Lidewij Broekhuizen A1 Saskia van Vugt A1 Peter Zuithof A1 Chris Butler A1 Samuel Coenen A1 Herman Goossens A1 Paul Little A1 Theo Verheij YR 2011 UL http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/4510.abstract AB Introduction: Cough is among the most frequently presented complaints, and a suitable opportunity to consider the presence of underlying asthma or COPD.Aim: To determine the prevalence of undetected chronic obstructive lung disorders in patients consulting their general practitioner (GP) with acute cough.Methods: For this cross sectional diagnostic study, 2532 adult patients without known asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), attending their GP with complaints of cough ≤ 28 days, were recruited from 12 European countries. All subjects underwent spirometry at day 28 after inclusion. Asthma was defined present if there were recurrent complaints of wheezing, cough or dyspnoea, AND an increase of the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) ≥ 12% or > 200 ml after bronchodilation. COPD was defined present according to two cut off values for the (post bronchodilator) ratio of the FEV1 to the forced expiratory volume (FEV1/FVC ratio): 1. below 0.7 (“fixed ratio”); 2. below the lower limit of normal (LLN) according to age, gender and height.Results: 336 subjects had asthma (13%), and according to the used definitions of COPD 1 and 2, respectively 246 (10%) and 168 (7%) subjects had COPD. Spearman's Correlation between GOLD and LLN was 0.71. There was discrepancy between the GOLD and LLN definition for COPD in especially the elderly and the very young.Conclusions: In patients presenting acute cough, undiagnosed asthma was more frequent than undiagnosed COPD. Different definitions for obstructive spirometry results led to large differences in the proportion of patients classified with COPD.