[The importance of determining the prevalence of COPD].

The chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common, preventable and partially treatable disease. COPD often remains undiagnosed, until it reaches advanced stages and significantly affects thepatient's quality of life. In the European Union the direct costs of COPD represent 56% (38.6 billion euro annually) of the direct costs of pulmonary diseases in the health budget. We analyzed a series of studies and we observed that the prevalence values vary between 6.5% (Lu Ming, China), 8.13% (Mihălţan Florin, Romania), 10.1% (the BOLD study), 17.4% (Peder Fabricius, Denmark). In Romania, the COPD prevalence is partially known, a recent study that evaluated the COPD prevalence on national level revealing a value of 8.13% in the population with an age over 40 years. Most of the studies include a selected population (smokers, age over 40, with or without symptoms). Establishing the prevalence of this disease as precise as possible becomes a necessity, even if this is pretty difficult to accomplish; the methods used in many studies on this subject are not uniform, thus the obtained results cannot be compared and correctly evaluated. Getting to know the prevalence of this disease as exact as possible is a difficult challenge, but extremely necessary for evaluating the seriousness of the phenomenon and getting to know the prevention and fighting measures. It is necessary to establish a methodology that has maximum effectiveness in identifying the COPD cases not only at an age over 40, but at lower ages as well, as it was proven that the disease can appear, even if more rarely, at ages below 40 as well. This article is part of a study which intends to try to determine a national wide applicable methodology.