Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Cardiovascular Risk in COPD
Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Cardiovascular Risk in COPD
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common smoking-related lung disease.
 Patients with COPD are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease such as heart
 attacks and strokes. A simple measurement called arterial stiffness is a good assessment of
 how likely people are to have cardiovascular disease, both in healthy populations and those
 with COPD. Aortic Pulse wave velocity (aPWV) measures arterial stiffness,

 Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) - a 6 week supervised group exercise and education class - is
 an effective intervention in COPD to reduce symptoms, improve exercise performance and
 prevent exacerbations. However, the effect of PR on cardiovascular risk in COPD is
 controversial as two small positive studies suggested benefit and one larger study did not.

 Investigators have recently shown that cardiovascular risk is higher in those COPD patients
 who get the most infections (exacerbations). PR is an effective intervention for preventing
 COPD exacerbations. Logically, the exercise component would be expected to reduce
 cardiovascular risk too.

 Investigators want to identify which patients with COPD get cardiovascular benefit from a PR
 programme and why others do not. Investigators propose to measure aPWV before and after PR.
 Investigators will then classify participants as responders or non-responders defined as the
 presence or absence of a significant improvement in aPWV. Investigators will be collecting
 demographic and clinical information including daily physical activity level and how
 effective the PR has been to enable the investigators to identify the characteristics of
 patients who do, and do not achieve cardiovascular risk reduction in response to PR in COPD.
 This will inform on better design of PR programmes for people living with COPD.
Inclusion Criteria:

 -  Patient diagnosed with COPD. The patient must be referred to PR from his/her physician
 with spirometry results confirming that he/she has chronic obstructive pulmonary
 disease (defined as post-bronchodilator FEV1/VC <0.70 and a compatible exposure
 history).

 -  Ability to exercise.

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  Neuromuscular diagnosis.

 -  Patient involved in any ongoing drug intervention study.