English summary: 10 YEARS OF THE COPD PROGRAMME: THE INCREASE IN PREVALENCE, HOSPITALISATIONS AND MORTALITY HAS BEEN STOPPED
Objectives The goals of the Finnish National Programme of Chronic Bronchitis and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) 1998 - 2007 were to reduce the prevalence of COPD, improve COPD diagnosis and care, reduce the numbers of moderate to severe cases of the disease, and reduce hospitalisations and treatment costs due to COPD. Over 900 events for 25,000 participating health care workers were arranged. The major strengths of this programme included multidisciplinary strategies and web-based guidelines in nearly all health care centres around the country.
Methods The data were gathered from national registries and several approaches used to measure to what extent the goals had been reached.
Results The prevalence of COPD remained unchanged. Smoking decreased in males and females from 30% to 26% (p<0.001) and from 20% to 17% (p<0.001), respectively. Significant improvement in the quality of spirometry was achieved. Hospitalisation decreased by 39.7% (p<0.001). The costs due to COPD were 88% lower than had been anticipated in earlier investigations. No increase in mortality due to COPD could be seen.
Conclusions This programme in combination with many other efforts has had several positive consequences such as stopping the increase in COPD prevalence, reducing smoking, improving the quality of diagnosis and reducing hospitalisations.
