Types of overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis
1 | Physician COPD diagnosis despite normal spirometry |
The physician did not use spirometry to establish a diagnosis of COPD (and a normal spirometry was later found in the study) | |
The physician “ignored” a normal spirometry result | |
2 | Discordant results for COPD diagnosis based on different spirometry-based definitions for airflow obstruction (e.g. post-bronchodilator FEV1/FVC <0.7 or FEV1/FVC <LLN) |
3 | COPD diagnosis based on pre-bronchodilator spirometry results |
4 | Comorbidities (e.g. heart failure or asthma) that affect spirometry and have clinical features which overlap with COPD |
5 | Normalisation of abnormal (post-bronchodilator) spirometry at follow-up |