A study sought to elucidate the impact of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on cardiovascular outcomes. The findings were published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine.
In this study, researchers retrospectively enrolled 74 patients with COPD and OSA overlap syndrome (OS) between January 2015 and July 2020. The OS-free control group was made up of 222 patients with only COPD and 222 patients with only OSA from the same period, who were pair-matched for age and sex. The researchers analyzed the prevalence rates of coronary heart disease (CHD), arrhythmia, heart failure, and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) among the three groups, using logistic regression models to screen for the risks of cardiovascular events.
The results showed that patients with OS had higher prevalence rates of heart failure (10.8% vs. 0.5% and 1.4%, respectively) and PAH (31.1% vs. 4.5% and 17.1%, respectively) than those with OSA alone or COPD alone (all P < 0.01). The CHD prevalence was also significantly higher in the OS group than in the COPD-alone group (25.7% vs. 11.7%; P < 0.01). The prevalence of PAH was markedly higher in the group with OSA alone or COPD alone (31.1% vs. 4.5% and 17.1%, respectively; all P < 0.01). There was no significant difference in the prevalence of arrhythmia among the three groups (20.3%, 22.5%, and 13.1%, respectively; P > 0.05), the researchers noted.
In patients with OS, risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) included hypertension, diabetes, body mass index, lactate dehydrogenase level, and tidal volume, and risk factors for heart failure included diabetes, partial pressure of oxygen, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, maximum ventilatory volume, and neutrophilic granulocyte percentage.
“[Patients with] OS have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular events, which is associated with hypoxemia, hypercapnia, and impaired lung function in these patients,” the researchers concluded.
Keywords: cardiac rhythm abnormalities; cardiovascular events; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; obstructive sleep apnea; overlap syndrome; risk stratification
