Assessing the Effectiveness of the COPD Assessment Test (CAT) to Evaluate COPD Severity and Exacerbation Rates

Figures & data

Table 1.  Demographic and clinical characteristics of patients

Characteristics	COPD Patients
Mean age (SD)	65 (9.9)
Number of males (%)	149 (90.3)
Smoking history
Biomass/ex-smoker/ currently smoking, number (%)	11(6)/62(37)/92(55)
Pack-years (mean, SD)	52 (23.8)
GOLD stage, number (%)
GOLD-I mild COPD	3 (1)
GOLD-II moderate COPD	56 (33)
GOLD-III severe COPD	70 (42)
GOLD-IV very severe COPD	36 (21)
FEV1,% of predicted mean (SD)	43.7 (14.8)
Number of Maintenance therapies (%)
SABA or SAMA^2	144 (87)
LABA^3 or LAMA^4	162 (98)
ICS^5 + LABA	122 (73)
Methylxanthine	37 (22)
LTOT^6	3 (1)
Exacerbations mean (SD)
Number of exacerbations over the past 12 months	2.6 (3.5)
Number of exacerbations that required hospitalization over the past 12 months	0.7 (1.5)

Short-acting beta-2 agonist, ²short-acting muscarinic antagonist, ³long-acting beta agonists, ⁴long-acting anti-muscarinics, ⁵inhaler corticosteroids, ⁶long-term oxygen treatment.

Figure 1.  The relationship between COPD exacerbation frequency and total CAT scores.

Table 2.  CAT score parameters of the patients with COPD

CAT	Score mean (SD)
1. Question	2.4 (1.4)
2. Question	2.9 (1.4)
3. Question	3.3 (1.4)
4. Question	3.8 (1.3)
5. Question	2.7 (1.6)
6. Question	1.9 (1.7)
7. Question	1.4 (1.6)
8. Question	2.5 (1.6)
Total	21.2 (7.5)

Figure 2.  The relationship between COPD severity and CAT scores.