How to Prevent Acute COPD Exacerbations (CHEST)
PulmCCM - June 2, 2013
"Prevention of COPD exacerbations is not the only reason, or even the main reason, to prescribe or use a COPD treatment. This review did not examine the other benefits of COPD medications, like improved breathing or increased exercise capacity.
These numbers should be taken with a full dash of salt and kept in their proper context. COPD treatments have all been compared against placebo, but almost never against each other in clinical trials. Absent such a head-to-head comparison (as in the POET-COPD trial), it’s an inappropriate stretch to say “Treatment X’s effect was 20% in this trial, Treatment Y’s was 26% in that other trial, therefore Y is better.”