The 2009 COPD Malaysian Guidelines - What's Important From Emergency Medicine Perspective?

The new 2009 Malaysian CPG on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease is out.

Download the guideline here at the Malaysian Thoracic Society Website here or here at the Academy of Medicine Malaysia website (scroll to the Respiratory Medicine section).

I have also given a talk on COPD last week.

Here's my five points summary of the importance of this guideline from Emergency Medicine perspective:

1. COPD is no longer just considered a lung parenchymal pathology, but one with significant systemic effects
2. Spirometry is required for both diagnosis and assessment of severity. Every effort should be made to refer patient for spirometry.
3. Smoking cessation is the single most cost effective - intervention to reduce the risk of developing COPD and stop its progression. Even a brief 3-min of counseling may result in smoking cessation rates of 5-10%.
4. The combination of LABA/ICS has been shown to improve lung function, quality of life and reduce exacerbation compared with placebo in COPD patients with FEV1 <>
5. Consider NIV in patients with persistent hypercapnoeic respiratory failure despite optimal medical therapy.

The 2009 COPD Malaysian Guidelines - What's Important From Emergency Medicine Perspective?

View more presentations from Chew Keng Sheng.

The 2009 COPD Malaysian Guidelines - What's Important From Emergency Medicine Perspective? by Dr. Chew Keng Sheng is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.


Conflict of Interest:
This set of slide was prepared for my talk during lunch time in the department I am working in. The lunch was sponsored by Astra-Zeneca (M) Sdn Bhd ["AZ"] and I have received educational grant from AZ to attend MTS scientific meeting on Asthma and COPD.