Tool Helps Identify Mild-to-Moderate Symptomatic COPD

While the COPD Assessment in Primary Care to Identify Undiagnosed Respiratory Disease and Exacerbation Risk (CAPTURE) screening tool was designed to identify people with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a study published online in the International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease shows its ability to also identify symptomatic patients with mild-to-moderate COPD.

The CAPTURE method uses 5 patient-completed questions and peak expiratory flow (PEF) thresholds (males ≤350 L/min; females ≤250 L/min) to identify patients with a forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV₁)/forced vital capacity (FVC) <0.70 and FEV₁ <60% predicted or exacerbation risk requiring further evaluation for COPD.

“Many patients with FEV₁  more than 60% are symptomatic however, and may also benefit from treatment,” Nancy K Leidy, PhD, of Patient-Centered Research at Evidera, and colleagues wrote. “The results of the analyses presented here suggest that CAPTURE can identify these milder patients with reasonable sensitivity and specificity when PEF thresholds of 450/350 are used.”

In the new analysis, researchers looked at data from the original CAPTURE development study for 259 people with COPD (including 73 with mild-to-moderate COPD) and 87 people without COPD. CAPTURE differentiated patients with COPD from those without COPD with 88% sensitivity and 83.9% specificity.

Patients whose CAPTURE results suggested a need for diagnostic evaluation were more likely to have COPD symptoms compared with patients whose results did not, according to the study. 

“Results of these analyses together with those from the original validation study suggest that CAPTURE can be used to identify symptomatic patients likely to have airflow limitation and in need of further clinical evaluation for possible COPD,” researchers wrote. “Based on the patient’s score on this questionnaire, clinicians can apply the 350/250 or 450/350 PEF thresholds as they determine the need for diagnostic spirometry.”

—Jolynn Tumolo

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