The Management And Evaluation of the Diagnostic-Therapeutic Pathway of Patients with Chronic Obstructive Diseases: A Retrospective Survey of the Italian Population

Abstract

The study is an independent retrospective cohort study, the data used were collected after obtaining informed consent from patients and were conducted anonymously online. The study was conducted on a heterogeneous population of patients with chronic obstructive respiratory disease (200 survey responses) who were attending the outpatient pneumology clinic "La Madonnina" based in Reggio Calabria, Italy from May 2021 until May 2022. The survey included ten multiple-choice questions with a single answer allowed and in some questions also the possibility of writing comments, carried out through the Survey Monkey digital platform. The objectives of the study are: 1. To identify the prevalence of symptoms perceived by patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD and asthma), 2. The role of the Respiratory Medicine Specialist and General Practitioner in the management of these diseases. 3. The emerging figure of self-management of these diseases is indirectly indicative of a high degree of depression in the population with these diseases, which is still poorly known and addressed by Italian general practitioners. The extrapolated data from the online survey, indicate that there is to date a prevalence of Asthma versus COPD, confirming that the prevalent common symptom is dyspnea, also clarifies that the management of the diagnostic and therapeutic pathway of chronic respiratory diseases is of specialist relevance; the prescribed therapies act mainly on the symptom dyspnea (25.36%).