January 19th, 2010 | 
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Image from Face of a Dreamer Flickr Stream
The mainstay of COPD management is bronchodilatation – the local, and national guidelines rely on beta-2 agonists, and anti-cholinergics. Recent(ish) data from the TORCH study suggested that inhaled corticosteroids increase the risk of fatal and non-fatal pneumonias.
Unopposed long acting beta agonists have been linked with increased cardiovascular death in asthmatics, although not in COPD. The most recent ’scare’ has been whether Spiriva increases cardiovascular death in COPD patients. Today the FDA rule that there is no compelling evidence to that effect.
To learn more about COPD visit the COPD GOLD guidelines pages, or the NICE guidelines on COPD. We’ll be updating our local guidance on COPD soon, so keep checking the Knowledge Base section for updates.
To see some patients with COPD, come to ward 3, any day of any week!
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