6. What were the four most common psychological symptoms reported by this sample

Question

6. What were the four most common psychological symptoms reported by this sample of patients

with COPD? What percentage of these subjects experienced these symptoms? Was there a

signi?cant difference between the moderate and severe air?ow limitation groups for

psychological symptoms?

9. Was the percentage of COPD patients with moderate and severe air?ow limitation using short-

acting ? 2 -agonists what you expected? Provide a rationale with documentation for your answer.

10. Are these ?ndings ready for use in practice? Provide a rationale for your answer.

Introduction Eckerblad and colleagues (2014, p. 351) conducted a comparative descriptive study to examine the symptoms of "patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and determine whether symptom experience differed between patients with mod- erate or severe airflow limitations." The Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSAS) was used to measure the symptoms of 42 outpatients with moderate airflow limitations and 49 patients with severe airflow limitations. The results indicated that the mean number of symptoms was 7.9 (t4.3) for both groups combined, with no significant dif- ferences found in symptoms between the patients with moderate and severe airflow limi tations. For patients with the highest MSAS Symptom burden scores in both the moderate and the severe limitations groups, the symptoms most frequently experienced included shortness of breath, dry mouth, cough, sleep problems, and lack of energy. The research- ers concluded that patients with moderate or severe airflow limitations experienced mul tiple severe symptoms that caused high levels of distress Quality assessment of CoPD patients physical and psychological symptoms is needed to improve the management of their symptoms.

Explanation / Answer

(9) In this case study, 31% of the COPD patients with moderate airow limitation and 65% of the COPD patients with severe airow limitation were treated using short-acting 2 -agonists.

Mean percent = (31 + 65) / 2 =48%

The use of short-acting 2 -agonists is more common for the COPD patients with severe airow limitation.

Whereas the use of short-acting 2 -agonists is rare for the COPD patients with moderate airow limitation.

So we might not expect that a large percent of COPD patients in this case study are using short-acting 2 -agonists.

(10) Not all the findings are ready for use in practice.

For eg. the use of Inhaled glucocorticosteroids is very common among both the groups, the COPD patients with moderate airow limitation and severe airow limitation

Also the use of Anticholinergic is very common among both the groups of COPD patients.

However we see that the moderate airow limitation and severe airow limitation groups are significantly different with respect to the use of Inhaled glucocorticosteroids (as p-value = 0.025 < 0.05)

Whereas the moderate airow limitation and severe airow limitation groups are not significantly different with respect to the use of Anticholinergic (as p-value = 0.245 > 0.05)

So all the findings are not ready for use in practice.

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