Abstract :
Background: In this present time, it is a necessity to re-evaluate the basic concept of asthma as well as COPD, that these two are separate conditions, or when out of these two conditions one evolves from the other, or whether they both exists together.
Materials and Methods: Total 60 numbers of patients were included in our prospective study, those all have chronic disease of airways and were classified into three respective groups namely, i) chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma–COPD overlap (ACO) [WU1] [k2] and the last one is asthma. The patients were selected from outdoor patient department of Khaja Nawaz Institute of Medical Sciences from the month of January 2020 to the month of September 2020, where the patients that suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and ACO were diagnosed carefully according to “GOLD” guidelines 2020 and the patients that suffers from asthma were carefully diagnosed according to the GINA guidelines 2020. All the patients that were selected in the study only after careful and thorough history taking, clinical examination of the patient, all the laboratory finding was done carefully, chest X-ray was done, spirometry was done before administration of bronchodilator and again spirometry was done after the administration of bronchodilator i.e. reversibility test was done, and last but not the least, examination of sputum was done that too carefully for careful eosinophil count.
Results: Total number of patients included in the study was 60 that suffers from COPD, Asthma, Asthma [WU3] COPD overlap. It included 41 (68.3%) males and 19(31.6%) females. In our prospective study out of 60 19 patients i.e. 31.9% out of total were diagnosed of having COPD, out of 60, 18 i.e. 30% have problem of asthma, and 18 patients i.e. 30% out of total were having ACO. We in our study found that all the three experimental groups show history of atopy, with 61.9% patients belong to ACO group, 17.3% belongs to COPD and 84.2% belongs to Asthma [WU4] group. When comparison between all the experimental
groups were made regarding sputum eosinophil count, revealed that all the three experimental groups show positive eosinophil count with respect to 22.2% in case of ACO, 84.2% in case of asthma group and 13% in case of COPD.
Conclusions: Out of three experimental groups, only ACO group represents the highest percentage among different patients that have disease of obstructive airways. It also reveals some of the features of disease asthma like atopy and positive sputum eosinophil count along with some features of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with respect to old age and those people has a positive history of smoking.
Keyword :
Asthma, COPD, Obstructive airway diseases Smoking.