Figures & data
Table 1. Patient characteristics (n = 160).
Figure 1. Study flowchart. During the study period, 1201 COPD patients were scheduled for visits to regional hospitals, and 224 patients were eligible for the study. One hundred sixty-two patients returned the questionnaire. Two subjects were excluded due to inadequate data; thus, 160 subjects were analysed in the study.
Figure 2. Patients’ comprehension of COPD. (A) Score distribution of patients’ comprehension of COPD. COPD patients were asked these questions to investigate their knowledge of COPD pathology. The score represents the percentages of participants who answered “yes”. Item 3 is a trick question to correct for responders who check off all the questions. (B) Total score distribution of COPD comprehension. The filled bars represent good COPD comprehension (≥7).
Figure 3. Past communication status about end-of-life care of COPD. Venn Diagram showing past communication status about end-of-life care. More than half of the physicians (54.4%) thought that they had provided detailed information to their COPD patients in advance (left). However, only 19.4% of the COPD patients thought they had communicated with their doctor about these topics (right). Only 14.4% of the physicians-patient pairs thought that they had rigorously discussed these issues with each other (overlapped).
Table 2. Multivariate analysis of patients’ decisions regarding MV and CPR.
Figure 4. Patients’ preferences regarding invasive life-sustaining treatments. Only 18.1% of patients wanted MV and 15.0% wanted CPR. The shaded parts represent the “decision made” cohort who answered “wish” or “do not wish”.
