BACKGROUND

In this study, we investigated patients in the early stages of COPD to support the hypothesis that symptoms of anxiety and depression are related to mild and moderate COPD and not only to the chronic complications that accompany severe disease.

METHODS

A total of 250 mild to moderate COPD patients were randomly selected from a population of 5239 individuals who were part of a study on early COPD detection and smoking cessation that was carried out in Central Macedonia, Greece. An age-matched control group of three hundred current or former smokers was also included. A questionnaire was used for demographic data collection, along with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) questionnaire for the evaluation of anxiety (HADS-A) and depressive (HADS-D) symptoms.

RESULTS

The COPD and non-COPD groups were similar in age, gender, and socioeconomic background. The majority of COPD patients were classified as Grade 1 or 2 and belonged to Group A or B according to the GOLD classification. Among the COPD patients, 19.6% had a score greater than 7 in the HADS-A subscale, 14% in the HADS-D subscale, and 10.8% in both, compared with 6%, 5%, and 5%, respectively, for the non-COPD individuals ( < 0.01). A regression analysis showed that the presence of at least one comorbidity (β = 0.43, < 0.001) and the presence of at least one respiratory symptom (β = 0.49, < 0.001) significantly predicted the total HADS score in the COPD group.

CONCLUSIONS

The prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms in early COPD patients was greater in comparison to non-COPD smokers. Implementing routine screening for mood disorders using the HADS in mild to moderate COPD outpatients may improve overall disease management and patients' quality of life.