Study on correlation between six minute walk test and BODE index in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients
Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is preventable and treatable disease with progressive persistent airflow limitation and enhanced chronic inflammatory response in the airways. Indian council of medical research conducted a study and found that total burden of COPD in India has more than doubled to about 14.84 million in 2011 from about 6.45 million in 1971Methods: It was an open label cross sectional study. It was conducted on patients attending the outpatient department of respiratory medicine, new medical college and hospital, Kota, over a period of one year. 100 COPD patients attending the respiratory outpatient department of GMC, Kota and fulfilling the inclusion criteria’s were included in the study. A diagnosis and severity of COPD was established by clinical symptoms and spirometric data as per GOLD guideline (ratio of FEV1 and forced vital capacity <0.7).Results: We found a significant negative correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient r = -0.664, p< 0.001) between 6 MWD and BODE index in study population.Conclusions: Thus, we concluded that the functional exercise capacity of COPD patients measured by 6MWT deteriorates linearly with severity of the disease assessed by the GOLD staging criteria. Hence we can use 6 MWT for assessing the severity of COPD in place of spirometry where the facility of spirometry is not feasible.