Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with lower health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Previous research has focused primarily on HRQOL in these patients, whereas few studies have compared HRQOL between patients with COPD and the general population.
The aim of this study was to evaluate differences in HRQOL between patients with COPD stage 2 to COPD stage 4 waiting to begin an outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) programme and Norwegian individuals with and without other chronic conditions.
A comparative survey design was used in this study of 100 patients with COPD waiting to begin PR and 3594 individuals from the general population. The SF-36 questionnaire was used to evaluate HRQOL.
Compared with the healthy general population, COPD patients waiting to begin PR had lower scores on all SF-36 components and on the physical and mental health summary components (p