COPD can be identified earlier, but is there evidence that this actually benefits patients?

Chapron and colleagues describe an intervention that led to increased identification of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.¹ In order to interpret these findings, it is necessary to understand whether patients who are diagnosed, who would not have otherwise been through symptomatic presentation, actually benefit either through improved quality of life or survival. This crucial question is elided aside from a statement that ‘Early detection, during COPD evolution, has been shown to control COPD evolution and symptoms’ with references to other studies that also demonstrate successful identification of the disease, rather than conclusive evidence of patient benefit.^2–4

If such evidence does not currently exist it would be helpful to acknowledge this explicitly. Readers could then decide whether it is reasonable to assume whether early identification of COPD benefits patients, or alternatively that promotion of such interventions may not yet be warranted, particularly while health services struggle to deliver care in accordance with existing evidence-based guidelines.