Nationwide Canadian COPD initiative

Nationwide Candian COPD (CCOPD) Initiative. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)is a common and important health problem among our aging population in Canada. COPD accounted for 4.9% of all deaths among men in Canada in 1999 and 3.8 % of all deaths among females; and there seems to be an increasing future trend. A panel of COPD research experts from all over Canada decided to join forces and develop a CCOPD Initiative, whereby a 5 years multi-center longitudinal cohort study and subsequent sub-studies will be put in place; with the support of a national system network (tissue bank, clinical laboratory data, centralized computerized data management platform, training center, collaboration, high quality standards). The general objective of the study is to define the natural history of COPD. More specifically, we will determine physiological, psychosocial and systemic consequences of COPD over a 5-year period and their relationship with important outcomes such as quality of life, exacerbations and activity limitation, health services utilization (e.g. hospitalizations) and all cause mortality. Additionally, we will determine the effects of gender and disease severity on these relationships and outcomes.